July 20, 2026
Provided image/Oscar Hammerstein Museum & Theatre Education Center
Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote lyrics to 'The Sound of Music' and other musical theater hits, lived and worked at a Bucks County farm. His home is depicted above.
The organization that stewards the Doylestown farm once owned by Broadway lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II is moving ahead with its restoration and redevelopment plans.
The Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center has secured a $1 million matching grant from the state to support several pieces of its project. The funding from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program will help the museum build a visitor and education center with classrooms and exhibition galleries. It will stand on the site of the former barn, which collapsed after a thunderstorm in May.
The grant also will go toward a parking lot, which must be built first to support ongoing tours of the Hammerstein home, museum board secretary Christine Junker said. The red farmhouse where the songwriter lived for the last 20 years of his life is due for several rounds of restoration, including a new roof and climate control systems. That work will begin in September.
Since the RACP money is a matching grant, the nonprofit will have to raise $1 million of its own to unlock the funding. Junker said the museum has received a $1 million quote for the parking lot alone, due to the added costs of stormwater management, lighting and landscaping.
The barn collapse did not impact the project timeline, Junker explained, because the welcome and education center construction will be completed at a later stage. The museum had planned to demolish the structure, which had been fenced off to visitors prior to the storm.
Though plans for the education center are still in development, the nonprofit intends to create exhibits on the Hammerstein family's history with American theater. The displays will feature Hammerstein's grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein I, who built several playhouses in New York City and produced operas. Each of the younger Hammerstein's major musicals will get its own exhibit, both the hits and "those that weren't as successful, yet taught him something," Junker said via email. The exhibits also will highlight Hammerstein's mentoring of Stephen Sondheim and that composer's own mentorship of Lin-Manuel Miranda.
As for programming, the museum plans to offer summer camps and classes that embody Hammerstein's "personal values of optimism and empathy and contributions to theatre emphasizing storytelling and collaboration," Junker said. They will be priced on a sliding scale.
Hammerstein wrote lyrics to over 800 songs in his lifetime. He is best known for his collaborations with Richard Rogers, several of which he penned on the Bucks County property. They include "Carousel," "The King and I," "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music" and "Oklahoma!"
The latest funding marks the third RACP grant the museum has secured. It also received $500,000 from the state program in 2024, and again in 2020.
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