The most common definition of a skyscraper is a ‘multi-storey building whose architectural height is at least 100m’. By that measure, the Newby-McMahon building in Wichita Falls, Texas, which is widely known as the “world’s smallest skyscraper” or the “world’s littlest skyscraper”, isn’t actually a skyscraper at all.
In fact, it’s not even close – the building is four storeys or 12m tall, which in most peoples’ minds makes it little more than a house with ideas above its station. When it was built in 1919, skyscrapers weren’t reaching the heights they are today – but even then, the Newby-McMahon wouldn’t have cut an impressive figure next to the 241m Woolworth building in New York, the world’s tallest building at the time.
Unfortunately for its investors, the building’s limited stature came as a shock to pretty much everyone – apart from the man who built it.
The story of the world’s smallest skyscraper
JD McMahon was the owner of the Wichita Falls oil company, whose offices occupied a one-storey brick building on the corner of Seventh and La Salle. Next door was a vacant lot, and during the local boom sparked by the discovery of oil in 1912, he decided to meet the city’s growing demand for office space by turning it into a new skyscraper. The building would, plans appeared to show, be 480ft (146m) tall – not bad for a small city barely past its 40th birthday.
McMahon drew up blueprints and plans to show investors, who promptly gave him a total of $200,000 (around $2.7m at today’s prices) to get going on construction. Preferring to keep things in-house, he decided to use his own construction company to build the structure.
This might be why it took the investors a little while to realise they’d been had. Slightly too late, it became apparent that McMahon was not, in fact, building a 480ft tower: he was building a 480in one. The investors tried to bring a lawsuit against him, but the judge found that they didn’t have a case: they’d signed off on the original blueprints. Sure enough, these promised that the building would be 480″ tall, and not, as they’d assumed, 480′.
Construction was completed, if you can call it that, in 1919. The building was 12ft long, 9ft wide and 40ft tall. The elevator company had pulled out, so there wasn’t even a way to get from one floor to the next. And McMahon hadn’t even asked for permission to build on the land. None of this bothered him, however – he disappeared from the town, and probably the state, shortly after, presumably with a good chunk of the investors’ $200,000 in his back pocket.
In his absence, the building became the city’s problem. During the oil boom, it had been an embarrassment; during the depression that followed, it was a liability. For a while, the building was occupied by two firms (the extra-narrow stairs that were added later took up around a quarter of the floor space); later it was boarded up.
For the rest of the 20th century, the block was occupied by a string of barber shops and cafes, and on multiple occasions, it was scheduled for demolition, but it somehow survived to be palmed off onto a local heritage society. However, the building remained controversial. In 1996, Ralph Harvey of the Wichita County Historical Commission told a reporter from Texnews, “I’ve never understood why some people make such a big deal about it. But about half of the people around here want to save it. The other half would prefer it just to be hauled off.”
In the end, the first half won out, and the building was restored to its former glory. Today it’s a local tourist attraction, with an antiques dealership on the ground floor and an artist’s studio upstairs.
The Newby-McMahon has often been used as a symbol of the gullibility of the boom era: of the eventual realisation that no, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, the petroleum boom won’t last, and this building is not, by any definition, a skyscraper, let alone the world’s smallest.
[Read more: Where is the world’s smallest park?]
