This modest single-storey Oamaru stone building, built in 1883, housed the auction rooms of general merchant and commission agent T.H. Brown.

Tyne Street was one of the earliest commercial areas which developed in Oamaru. By the mid-1860s there were a cluster of commercial buildings. Thomas Hood Brown (d.1905) was not the first owner of the land – John McLean leased Lot 16 in 1877 and John Lemon took over the lease in 1879. Lemon sold the lease to Thomas Hood Brown and James Hassell the younger in 1883. Thomas Brown was a general merchant and commission agent. Brown had a store further down Tyne Street that was built in 1876 (Register No. 2289), designed by architect James Johnston.
In early 1883 Brown went into partnership with James Hassell the younger as auctioneers and commission agents. New premises were being built in March 1883. An 1884 advertisement names the building as ‘T.H. Brown and Co.’s auction mart.’ It is thought that James Johnston also designed the auction mart for Brown.

English born James Johnston had described himself as an organ builder (in London 1869), a builder (in 1871), and by the time he arrived in New Zealand (probably in 1872); he was describing himself as an architect. He made a strong contribution of Oamaru’s Victorian streetscape (issuing 26 of the 113 tenders in Oamaru in 1882 alone, comparing favourably with Forrester and Lemon’s 64). Around 1885 he moved to Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, where he died in 1890.

As with many other merchants of the mid 1880s the economic depression hit Thomas Brown and James Hassell hard: in January 1884 Brown filed for bankruptcy, Hassell following shortly after. Brown left Oamaru shortly afterwards and settled in the North Island. He died in Parramatta in 1905. The lease was sold by mortgagee sale to John McLean in 1884.

The building later had a number of tenants who often carried on a similar business to Brown. Auctioneer Robert Blair took over the lease in 1895. In 1917 the property was leased by Oamaru commission agent John Familton, and then to Wright Stephenson and Co. Ltd in 1919. In the 1960s the lease was held by MacEwans Machinery Ltd. Since the 1980s the Oamaru Operatic and Musical Society Incorporated has occupied the building.

In 2013 T.H. Brown and Co.’s former auction mart remains a significant element in Oamaru’s Harbour/Tyne Street historic area (Register No. 7064).