It was the first Presbyterian church erected in the city, founded by John Dunmore Lang who had arrived in the colony in 1823.

It had seen only five ministers in over a century: Lang (to 1878), A. Milne Jarvie (to 1886), W. M. Dill-Macky (to 1913), Thomas Tait (1925–1933) and Henry Robert Grassick (until closure).

[7] A complex series of real estate transactions, land swaps and compensation agreements enabled the Presbyterian Church to reconstruct their church and offices on the original but enlarged site, facing both Lang Park and Wynyard Park, with frontages to Jamieson, York, and Margaret Streets.

The winning design was selected in May 1928 but it was not until April 1929 that tenders were called and work commenced on the site in July 1929.

This caused a long-running dispute across several decades, finally resulting in legal action and the church vacating the building in the c. 1970s.

[11][12][13][8] By the 1990s, there were questions over the building's future, and its owner, the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, initiated a series of redevelopment proposals.

[14] By 1998, when the last tenants were evicted, it was home to an 80-person congregation, which was forced to move to a church in Devonshire Street, artists and community groups, who were confined to the first two floors, with the upper storeys having been closed for some years.

The restoration, funded by the redevelopment, faced challenges due to the building's disused state: contractors responsible for the renovation described "leaky ceilings, crumbling sandstone and damaged timber and metalwork", and having to sift through the contents of a floor "strewn with rubbish", among other issues.

The Assembly Hall is a large, two storey, elliptical space of unique design located in the middle of the building and occupying the full width of the site.

The facade is designed in Inter-War Gothic Revival style with ashlar sandstone and a granite base.

The upper facade comprises a series of tripartite flathead windows, with bay divisions expressed by buttresses.

As well as recalling the early nineteenth-century history of this area as Church Hill, the building also has a powerful ability to reflect the impact made on the city by the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The building is important in the professional work of the noted architectural partnership of Rosenthal, Rutledge and Beattie.