By DAN SOKIL

Long a fixture on Lansdale’s Main Street, Stuart’s Music has been offering music lessons, instruments and every type of music imaginable since the business was founded in the late 1940s.

“Robert and Sue Stuart, my parents, started out on Derstine Avenue in a small store, and he worked there part time in the ’40s during the war,” said current owner Jim Stuart.

“He was working in the SKF defense plant over on the Merck property on Sumneytown Pike, and was doing mainly music lessons part time at the store,” said Stuart.


The store moved to its current location in 1951, seen in the photo — with the words “Instructions, Supplies” painted on the window and neon lights spelling “Stuart’s Music” — of a small storefront at 851 West Main.

The Stuart family lived behind the building for much of Jim’s childhood, and the 1950s-style cars frequently parked in front of his store — seen in another of our photos today — always belonged to customers, not his family.


“They came to this location in 1951, and lived behind the store for many years. For me that was from that 1951 period through about 1965, when I got married and found my own place,” said Stuart.

The store was expanded in 1962, and added a light-up sign reading, “Stuart’s Music: Instruments, Instructions, Supplies” and decorated with musical notes. That’s shown in the third photo featured today.

“Instruments, giving lessons, and selling music and supplies have always been our main business,” Stuart said. “They’re all popular, and all types, it just depends on the individual but we have a mix of all ages.”

His father’s favorite instrument was the steel guitar, and Stuart remembers him playing mostly that, the mandolin and banjo while the younger Stuart was growing up.

“He ran the store up until the late 1980s, and then I stepped up when he passed away and it was just too much for my mother to run, so I’ve been the manager ever since,” he said.

Stuart’s Music is located at 851 W. Main Street in Lansdale and can be contacted at (215) 855-4878.