The nonprofit Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center (OHMTEC) is raising funds to purchase, restore, and preserve Highland Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Oscar Hammerstein II’s former home and creative epicenter. The mission is to honor Hammerstein’s work as a librettist and lyricist, and his legacy of mentorship and social activism.

A fundraising gala, featuring Broadway stars Christy Altomare (Anastasia), Derek Klena (Jagged Little Pill) and Justin Guarini (American Idol), hosted by Ted Chapin is planned for July 11, 2022. Tickets will be available to the general public starting April 30 on OHMTEC’s website, hammersteinmuseum.org. For information on sponsoring the event, please email hammersteinmuseum@gmail.com.  

In 1940, as the United States faced the prospects of entering World War II, Oscar and his wife, Dorothy, bought the seventy-two-acre working farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Like many New York-based artists of the time, Hammerstein was seeking a quiet place to work outside of the city, as well as a refuge should the conflict come to American shores. 

Greg Roth – House Tour

The Hammerstein family lived at Highland Farm for the last 20 years of Oscar’s life. This is the place where he forged his legendary partnership with Richard Rodgers and that inspired many of their greatest musical works, including The Sound of Music, Carousel, The King and I, Oklahoma! and South Pacific. Here, Hammerstein wrote the lyrics to songs loved the world over, including the final lyrics he wrote before his death, “Bless my homeland forever,” from the song “Edelweiss” in The Sound of Music

It is also the place where Hammerstein mentored a young Stephen Sondheim, and where he contributed to society by increasing our awareness of social issues and the need for tolerance of diversity, as illustrated in songs like “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” from South Pacific

Over 75 Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes can be directly traced back to Highland Farm.

A growing list of luminaries have joined the nonprofit’s Honorary Advisory Board, including actress Shirley Jones, who said, “I owe my career to Oscar Hammerstein.” Other notables on the board include Ted Chapin, the former head of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization; Melinda Mathias Walsh, granddaughter of Hammerstein; actress/author/film and television producer Mariel Hemingway; English actor and producer Gerald Charles Dickens; National Medal of the Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen; Broadway and television actor/singer Justin Guarini; teen actress Kassie Mundhenk; and most recently Grammy award-winning singer/actor Jonathan Groff.

Photos: Grace-Anne Alfiero