Built to provide much-needed office space for the Mutual Life & Citizens Assurance Company Limited, the building continues to be primarily-occupied by its original tenants.

"[5] MLC commissioned their preferred architects, Bates, Smart & McCutcheon, who had also designed their 1938 head office and with whom MLC would collaborate on the majority of their new office expansion programme, designing buildings in Brisbane (1955), Wollongong (1956), Shepparton (1959), Ballarat (1954), Geelong (1953), Adelaide (1957), Perth (1957), Newcastle (1957) North Sydney (1957), and Canberra (1959).

[7] As a mark of its position as the tallest building in North Sydney, a weather beacon was installed on the roof by Standard Telephones and Cables.

[12] Completed at a final cost of A£4.5 million the MLC Building was officially opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 22 August 1957, who expressed that "The view [from the top floor] gives me such a new conception of Sydney that quite frankly I'm beginning to like the place".

Curtain walls of glass and anodized aluminium spandrels, with facing materials of terracotta, marble, granite and mosaic tiles.

Seminal building on subsequent high-rise design in Sydney and utilised construction and structural techniques not previously used in Australia.