In 1866 the Bankof South Australia purchased a new site in King William Street, and commissioned a new building designed by Edmund Wright of Adelaide and Lloyd Tayler of Melbourne which was erected between 1875 and 1878. This ornate building in the French Renaissance Style, now known as Edmund Wright House, was the head office of the bank until 1892 when the Bank of South Australia was taken over by the Union Bank. By 1951 after various takeovers this Adelaide building became an asset of the ANZ Bank, until 1969 when it was sold to a Sydney developer who wanted to use the site for a multi-storey office block. There was an extensive campaign in the 1970s to save the building from demolition, resulting in the State Government purchasing it in 1971 and renaming it Edmund Wright House in honour of the prominent Adelaide architect.

An exceptional feature of this building is the amount of exceedingly intricate stone carving undertaken by celebrated Scottish sculptor William Maxwell and British painter and sculptor Joseph Durham. The most noteworthy carvings are heads of Mercury, Minerva and Winter on keystones in Gilbert Place and the coat of arms on top of the portico on the King William street facade.

Jensen, Elfrida, Colonial architecture in South Australia: a definitive chronicle of development 1836-1890 and the social history of the times, Adelaide: Rigby, 1980