In 2015 Hamilton is renewing itself around an arts and culture movement taking root on James Street North. But the arts have been at home on James South for over a hundred years, and the building that today houses the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts has been making musical movements of its own for a long time.

"This building was built for the arts and served the community for over 100 years - the arts are here in those walls very deeply imbedded. So we hear those voices, we hear those songs played by the musicians anytime you walk in - you feel that different environment", says Vitek Wincza, the Polish dancer who threw himself into restoring the spirit of the Conservatory after purchasing the building in 1997.

The Hamilton Conservatory of Music (known after 1965 as the Royal Hamilton College of Music) was originally founded in 1897 and operated from two early locations until a purpose design-build in 1905 planted it firmly at 126 James Street South.

Even then the focus moved beyond music lessons, and the school offered art, culture, dance, musical kindergarten and elocution training, as well as clubs, lessons and formal examinations in piano, strings, winds, organ and guitar.

The grand building, with its sweeping staircase, fine woodwork, elegant recital hall and studio doors packed with sound-proofing horsehair (state of the art in its time) enrolled thousands of students and even had outreach through community service teachers. It was affiliated with the University of Toronto, and had branch offices both in the city of Hamilton and beyond.

But by 1980 the Conservatory/College closed its doors due to financial difficulties.

The building sat vacant for some time until rented to Alternatives for Youth, a drug and alcohol support program that administered counselling and recreational programming from the facility, including a basketball court in the elegant recital hall.

In 1997, one hundred years after its original founders had begun to conceive of their arts building, it fell back into the hands of an artist with the vision to revive its former glory.

Wincza had defected in 1982 from his Polish dance troupe's North American tour during their only stop in Canada - in Hamilton. At first, he regretted giving up his dance career, but with encouragement he tried teaching and found a new love that allowed him to celebrate all that he had learned and to give it to others. Within 15 years he had an established dance school and was ready to take on new challenge

The Conservatory building called to him; he felt its absorption of the arts, even though it was looking tired and defeated. He invested all he had in the building.

"Everything was consumed by my passion, by my vision, and the journey- I didn’t have time to think about anything. Because I had nothing. Everything what you see here in conservatory is from my vacations. I didn’t go to vacations, I would save some money to buy the paint; I’ve learned how to paint, how to do carpentry I’ve learned everything.

It made me so much richer than just being a dancer all my life."

Early student Laura Kappel recalls Wincza juggling the restoration and the school. Her ballet class of older students would finish up at the end of the night and they would hear Wincza move on to his next tasks.

"He would teach our ballet class, and then he would go back upstairs - he lived on the third floor in an apartment - and he would be renovating. So basically he would work, whenever he wasn't teaching, to be fixing up the building".

Wincza says at times he worried what he would do with all of the rooms in the building and then he resolved that with the combination of music, dance and art together, every room could be used for every purpose, and suddenly they were full. They were pulsing.

Today from the basement studio to the attic "atelier" space the building is once again alive with the arts, delivering over 100 classes to groups and individuals of all ages, hosting world-class performance, incubating dance of all kinds, celebrating it's return to the sounds and spirit of creativity.

And even more than being refilled with the arts, the building overflows out into the community through the Culture for Kids charity, that by this year will be a full time endeavour taking the arts into community centres and building on a delivery model with partner organizations that has allowed the HCA to reach over 50,000 children with free arts and cultural programming.

And in quiet moments, the conservatory pays homage to its past, hallways lined with artwork, photos and portraits of its patrons and its evolution.

"We often have people - older people - come in who just want to visit with the building. For them it holds such a special place", says Kappel, today an HCA administrator. A gallery in the first floor hallway makes art a constant part of the surroundings.

These have been eighteen years well spent.

Vincza restored the building, and the building restored Vincza, creating from his dance defection a legacy of creative contribution to his adopted home.