official institutions. Its assets include Australia's holdings of gold and foreign exchange. The Bank is wholly owned by the Australian Government. A requirement of the Reserve Bank Act 1959 was that the head office of the bank must not be in the same building as the head office of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) or any other bank. In line with this requirement, separate buildings were constructed for the state capitals Darwin and Canberra. The Bank currently consists of a Head Office, located in Sydney, branches in Adelaide and Canberra, regional offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth and representative offices in London and New York. Reserve Bank site The land on which the Reserve Bank is built, was in the 19th century occupied on by the first Wesleyan Chapel built in 1821 and subsequently used as a Unitarian Chapel in 1850, a Wesleyan School House also built in 1821 and purchased in 1843 by the Roman Catholic Church to be used as a school (demolished ). There was also a freestanding Georgian house occupied by a solicitor and a Georgian cottage. By the mid-1870s following the demolition of the church and school a row of three three-storey Italianate terrace houses known as "Lucretia Terrace" was erected (). The Georgian house was demolished and two four-storey late Victorian terrace houses were erected (1891). In the Georgian cottage was demolished and the cottage next door and two three-storey terraces were built; one of these was demolished in 1921 and a three-storey brick building known as "Whitehall" was erected on the site. In 1957, the Director-General of Works (Dr Lodge) suggested to the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank that the site at the top of Martin Place, owned by the Sydney City Council would be suitable for the construction of the head office of the Reserve Bank, and it was subsequently purchased for this purpose. The Bank's administrators called for a design for the building which was contemporary and international, to exemplify a post-war cultural shift away from an architectural emphasis on strength and stability towards a design that would signify the bank's ability to adapt its policies and techniques to the changing needs of its clientele. Before plans were drawn up representatives of the Reserve Bank and the Commonwealth Department of Works made detailed studies overseas into Reserve Bank planning and organisation. The Sydney Reserve Bank building was designed by the