This is the East wing of the South Australian Museum, which opened in 1915.

The South Australian Museum began in the Institute building on North Terrace, Adelaide. In 1859 Frederick Waterhouse offered to be the first curator of the Institute's museum and began to build a collection in an honorary capacity. He was appointed as the first curator when the Institute Building was completed in 1861. The initial focus of Waterhouse's early collecting was birds and mammals and some of these early specimens are still preserved in the collection.

In 1884 the new Jervois Wing of the Library, Art Gallery and Museum, opened to the public, with the Museum housed in the northern half. In 1895 a 'temporary' extension to the north opened. It is still in use. The final addition to the Museum's collection of buildings was a new natural science building, built in the mid-1980s and located behind the State Library on Kintore Avenue.