4 Harbour Street

Maudes Store built in 1875, is possibly the oldest building on Harbour Street, designed by John Lemon for Arthur Maude, notably the only building in the heritage precinct and one of only a handful in Oamaru built out of Greystone from the Corporation Quarry on Edan Street.

The left-hand gable was built in 1875 for £800; the interior was an open storage area with the gabled roof supported by wooden pillars. The wide main door provided access for a dray to unload sacks of grain, while the rear entrance provided access to the railway line and nearby port. The building covered an area of 116 by 30 ft (35 by 9m), with 12 ft (4m) walls, each with a window and folding doors. The floor was timber, (now replaced with concrete in the left gable). There were two offices at the west end, fronting Harbour Street, each with a fireplace, and the rear was storage for 48,000 bushels of grain.

1876 Maude made an addition of the right-hand gable of the building – The Oamaru Mail give a detailed account ‘A new store and auction room, adjoining the large grain store erected about a year ago.’ The new building occupied an area of 33ft by 90ft (10 by 27m), the entire building covering an area of 66ft to a depth of 100ft from Harbour Street to the railway siding (20 by 30m). ‘The walls are of rubble, faced with Oamaru stone and have a very substantial as well as a pleasing appearance.’ The buildings were roofed with iron and lit by windows and fanlights at the ends and skylights. The architect was John Lemon, and the contractors John Thomson (carpenter), and Wilson and Roxburgh (stonemasons). The addition includes a sample room at the east end, and an auction room and two offices at the Harbour street end. The rooms were 16 by 12ft (5 by 4m) and 16 by 10ft (5 by 3m), one a clerk’s office and the other a private office.

The office and auction rooms are still there today and house the Victorian Wardrobe and other small businesses.

Maude went bankrupt in 1888 and took a position as assistant manager at the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, the large three-story building at the far end of Harbour Street 

In 1907 the building was purchased by the chemist Edward Lane, who created the famous Lanes Emulsion, their iconic slogan “ Its Famous Because It Is Good”  painted on the main doors.

Lanes emulsion, which had a strong fishy smell owing to its high cod liver oil content, was invented by Edward Lane, a chemist from Oamaru, in 1898. In 1907/08 the company opened a new factory in the town's Harbour Street, The original recipe contained cod liver oil, beechwood creosote, mineral lime, soda, brandy, vitamins, fresh egg yolk and some secret ingredients.

Sold in clear glass bottles, the thick cream-coloured liquid was fed to generations of New Zealand children and was also sold overseas. A branch factory was opened in Melbourne in the 1920s. Originally claiming to be "a reliable remedy for pulmonary ailments", the product was still in production until 1984. Oamaru company Crombie and Price, which bought Lane's Medicine in 1971, still holds the rights and recipe to the product.

Trust History 

The Trust purchased the building from Richard Vinbrux in 2000                              Since coming into the trusts care fire protection has been added, the building has been reroofed, current projects have been restoring the fan light windows and returning the rear of the building to its original green colour.

The rear gables have been stabilised and the roughcast removed from the stone returning it to its original look.

Tenants 

Harbour Street Bakery                                                                                    Luzette, art studio and tattoo studio                                                              The Victorian Wardrobe