I don’t have massively strong memories of what the Prince Edward Building at the corner of Scarth St. and 11th Ave looked like in its prime. It was built in 1906, and was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the Dominion of Canada’s chief architect David Ewart. Over its 100 plus years of life it’s served as a post office (from 1906-56), city hall (from the early 1960s to 1976) and, since 1980, as the home of the Globe Theatre.
The building is designated as a municipal heritage property, but over the last while it’s become a bit of an eye-sore, with a fair amount of grime on its exterior walls from traffic exhaust and other pollutants, along with a significant amount of droppings (and even the odd broken egg) from pigeons that roost in its various nooks and crannies.
In January, the Globe announced that it was purchasing the building from its previous owners. There’s still some structural work that needs to be done, but today a crew was out with a pressure washer giving the building a scrub-down. Once the gunk is cleaned up from the sidewalk it will brighten things up a bit at that corner.