The Taiparoro Mansion Guesthouse has been owned by four families since the late 1800s – but Tauranga resident Olive Smyth remembers it as the Adams' house.

According to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, John Cuthbert Adams built the home on Fifth Ave in 1882 and later extended it to comfortably house his 10 children.

The Taiparoro Mansion Guesthouse.

Miss Bertha Adams and her brother Lionell were the last of the Adams children to live in the home – and 92-year-old Olive remembers them clearly.

Olive lives in her home built by one of the Adams brothers in the late 1930s, about 200 metres from the Adams' house.

For 10 years Olive visited Miss Adams – and Miss Adams visited Olive.

'When she came here she always wore her hat and her gloves…and when I went to have a cup of tea with her the silver tea pot came out.”

There was a wire fence at the edge of the Adams' property and a barberry hedge, which Olive remembers Lionell Adams clipping regularly.

In 1973 the Adams' house was purchased by Mr A.K Garrity, who altered it by installing a larger window in the living room, French doors in the sitting room, and adding a balcony to an upstairs room.

Mr Garrity sold the house to Mr and Mrs Wallis in 1989. The Wallis family also made changes to modernise the home before Kevin and Lois Kelly purchased the home in 1990.

The Kelly family provided bed and breakfast accommodation in the home until 2001. Today, the building operates as a guesthouse – the Taiparoro Mansion Guesthouse.

Despite all of its owners – to Olive property it is still Miss Adams' house.

'It was always be the Adams' house to us.”