If those investors had known, maybe they’d have hung on to it. Yet Fodor’s 2008 guide to Texas, which prides itself on highlighting “the best this big and beautiful state has to offer”, names the Newby-McMahon building as a must-see attraction. 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. Image: Solomon Chaim at Wikimedia Commons The date is that of the completion of the one-story building next door. Today it’s a local tourist attraction, with an antiques dealership on the ground floor and an artist’s studio upstairs. In the end, the first half won out, and the building was restored to its former, er, glory. The other half would prefer it just to be hauled off.” But about half of the people around here want to save it. 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. The building was built in 1919 and was designed to be 40 stories tall by developer J.D. So the smallest skyscraper that everyone would agree is a. The World’s Littlest Skyscraper is located in Downtown Wichita Falls at 511 7th St. However, the building remained controversial. Oriel Chambers in Liverpool, built in the 1860s, has the steel frame but is only five storeys. 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.įor 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. During the oil boom, it had been an embarrassment during the depression that followed, it was a liability. Bonus: May of 1919.īig kids: $24,000.In his absence, the building became the city’s problem. McClurg Building Chicago Holabird & Roche, Chicago 1899 One of Chicago's smallest skyscrapers is the McClurg Building. Little kids: The 400-foot building is taller. Little kids: Which is taller, a 40-foot tall building or a 400-foot tall building? Bonus: If they started building this little building in February 1919 and took 3 months, in what month did they finish?īig kids: If the building should have cost $2,000, but people gave McMahon 12 times as much money to build it, how much money did they give him? Bonus: If your house is 24 feet tall and shrank to 1/12 that height, how tall would it be - and how would it look next to you? Wee ones: Most skyscrapers look like a rectangle from the side. The buyers were super angry, because they thought they were buying a 48-story building, not a dinky 4-story one! The Newby-McMahon Building still stands today as the world’s shortest, silliest skyscraper. So he built a skyscraper only 480 inches tall, which comes to only 40 feet! That cost him a lot less money to build, and he kept all the leftover money. But he worded the papers very carefully: he never said 480 feet. Lots of excited people paid money to own a piece of it. McMahon told people he was building a “skyscraper” - a really tall building - with a height of 480. It’s four stories tall and may seem more like a practical joke.
Its outward appearance is odd, to say the least, considering it’s barely wide enough to hold its windows.
If you don’t, you could get a big bad surprise, like the people in Wichita Falls, Texas. Coming in at a lofty 40 feet in height and measuring 18 feet in depth by 10 feet in width, the Newby-McMahon Building of Wichita Falls, Texas, holds the somewhat dubious honor (to locals at least) of being the world’s ‘littlest skyscraper.’. When you’re building any kind of house or building, you have to watch the numbers closely.
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