Despite its distinctive design receiving recognition for its heritage value as "one of the finest art deco buildings in Australia", including from the Australian Institute of Architects and through a listing on the Federal Register of the National Estate, the Rural Bank Building was controversially demolished in 1983 and replaced by the postmodern State Bank Centre development by Peddle Thorp & Walker, prompting greater community efforts to protect the heritage of Sydney.

With the City of Sydney's extension of Martin Place to Macquarie Street due to be completed on 8 April 1936, a series of development sites along each side of the new thoroughfare had been put up for sale.

The Rural Bank's chief architect, Frank Turner, was commissioned to design the new building, with excavation of the site and foundation works commencing on 20 August 1934 by A Bradshaw Limited.

[2] The construction contract for £179,816 was awarded in April 1935 to master builders Hutcherson Brothers, and was noted for including among the first uses in Sydney of a combined use of structural steel and reinforced concrete beams.

[3][4] The two foundation stones on either side of the Martin Place entrance were laid in an official ceremony on 19 December 1935 by the Premier of New South Wales, Bertram Stevens, and the bank president, Clarence McKerihan.

On its completion, the architectural journal Decoration and Glass, noted: Appropriately situated in a commanding position in Sydney's most important and central street, the Rural Bank's new head office towers skywards for the maximum height prescribed by the city's building regulations.

This sparked significant opposition from community groups, including the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the National Trust of Australia, who initiated a public campaign to retain the Art Deco bank building.

In stark contrast, heritage architect Ian Stapleton expressed his view that the Rural Bank was "one of the finest art deco buildings in Australia.

Whereas the front is over-inflated, trying hard to make five storeys the equivalent of 11 on the Commonwealth Savings Bank, the rear is blank and forbidding; the tower sits uncomfortably between both, its vertical ribs of windows like a sick pastiche of art deco.