Soon after Francis sold out to Gibson and moved to Sydney to establish a new business under his father's name, which would become the Mark Foy's department store chain.

[3][4] Francis Foy moved to Sydney from Melbourne after the death of his father in 1884 and leased premises in Oxford Street with his brother Mark Jr.

Early in the twentieth century, they bought up the fifteen properties which occupied most of the block bounded by Liverpool, Castlereagh, Elizabeth and Goulburn Streets.

The distinctive yellow faience brickwork outside was imported from Bermotoff in Yorkshire, the white glazed bricks from Shaw's Rigg in Glasgow.

Already in the 1970s courts of justice had begun to use the upper floors and in 1983 a government committee recommended a multi-court complex, with 16 new court-rooms in the Foy building.

The arrangement of shopfronts and windows is reminiscent of similar buildings in Chicago, while the truncated pyramid roofs at corners and steeply gabled pediments recall French Second Empire design.

Similar awnings, with pressed metal soffits, extend along Elizabeth and Castlereagh Streets, with large metal-framed show windows beneath.

Internally, notable features are the mosaic tiled and terrazzo floors, decorative plaster ceilings and column capitals, and the glass chandelier above the circular stair.

The former Mark Foys building is aesthetically significant as a high point of department store architecture in Australia for its time.

It contains many fine examples of design and craftsmanship, including the moulded terracotta external elements, mosaic tiled and terrazzo floors, gilded brass surrounds to show windows, decorative plaster ceilings and wrought iron balustrading.