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Piece by Piece – Why Toronto’s Louie Santaguida saved the James Street Church organ

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When the Toronto developer, Louie Santaguida, took his initial site tour of the James Street Baptist Church in Hamilton, he not only immediately fell in love with the building, he purchased it soon afterwards in June 2013.  

Santaguida’s affection for the James Street Church shouldn’t come as a surprise.  This is a developer, after all, who has taken on several other heritage projects in Toronto in the past.  This is a developer who has also made it the priority of his development company, Stanton Renaissance, to reinvigorate spoiled and largely forgotten city properties.

Built in 1878, the James Street Baptist Church has long been a fixture in the downtown Hamilton landscape and was in fact designated a heritage building by the city, along with other signature buildings like Hamilton’s Piggot Building and the Sun Life building.   

Most times when developers seek to renovate or even demolish a building as historically significant as the James Street Church, public reaction is less than favorable.  That’s even the case when the property is halfway crumbling, which when Louie Santaguida purchased the James Street Church was precisely the state of the church.   

At the time of the James Street Church’s purchase by Santaguida, much of the Church was structurally unsound.  Santaguida had particular worries about the building’s façade and roof, concerns that were legitimized after engineers hired by Louie Santaguida completed a detailed survey of the building.   

In fact, part of Santaguida’s inspiration to buy the James Street Church was to save the property from complete demolition by local developers. 

“When I saw the [James Street] Church and realized that the building was in danger of being completely torn down, there was no way I could let that happen,” Santaguida comments.  “If there was a way to reincorporate the building into the community and  do it in a way that would preserve the church’s history and resonate with the community, that’s what I wanted to do.”

Louie Santaguida adds, “I think we’re well on our way to doing that.”

Santaguida and Stanton Renaissance plan to preserve the stone entrance of the church and the bell tower facing James Street and incorporate these two structural elements into a new $80 million condo and mixed-used development project.  It’s a plan that looks to provide a perfect balance between preserving the heritage of the church, while reincorporating it into the community. 

But, besides the plan to incorporate the Church in an ambitious mixed-used development, the efforts that Louie Santaguida have made over the past year to preserve some of the historical items within the church is also particularly interesting and worthy of discussion.  

Santaguida’s efforts to preserve the enormous 1939 Casavant organ that was housed in the James Street Church especially comes to mind in this respect. 

“From my point of view, preserving the James Street Church organ was just as important as preserving the church itself, as far as historical significance.  That’s why when we bought the church, I made a promise to myself that we would find a good, worthy home for the instrument.  Which is not easy when you’re talking about such a large and intricate instrument.”

With that promise in mind, Santaguida donated the organ to John Kotlan and Michael Sergi of Northern Organs under the understanding that Kotlan and Sergi would find a proper home for the instrument.  From there, in a six-week, intensive effort beginning in January of last year, Kotlan and Sergi went to work dismantling, wrapping and removing the organ from the church, pipe by pipe.  To give you a better idea of the scale of the project, the James Street Church organ has a total count of 2,000 pipes ranging in length from 1.5 centimeters to 6 meters. 

“Seeing the complexity of this organ firsthand and seeing the intricacy of its design and craftsmanship brought home just how much passion and dedication went into the building of [this instrument],” Louie Santaguida adds.  “Just like the construction of the church itself, building this custom organ originated out of love and passion.  That made the promise of preserving the instrument even stronger in my mind.”

Having now been successfully removed from the church, the James Street Church organ is safely in a storage unit as a permanent home for the organ is found.  

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