The Littlest Skyscraper in the World
In Wichita Falls, Texas, there is a strange building that is four stories tall and very skinny. It sits on a corner near downtown Wichita Falls on Seventh Street and LaSalle Street, and how it got built is even stranger than the way the building looks. There is an interesting tale behind the structure that is called “The Littlest Skyscraper in the World.”
The world’s littlest skyscraper is officially called the Newby–McMahon Building. The red brick building is four stories, 10 feet wide and 16 feet long, 40 feet high, and has 118 square feet per floor.
Things started in 1906 when Gus Newby built a two-room building next to a vacant lot where the world’s littlest skyscraper would end up. Nothing happened for 13 years until Newby rented one of his rooms to six businessmen in 1919. One of those businessmen was JD McMahon, a petroleum landman from Philadelphia.
McMahon was looking for investors for a bold new project. He wanted to build a new skyscraper that had room for apartments, offices, and retail businesses, but he wouldn’t give a location where he planned to build it. He secured $200,000 in stock (about $2.9 million in today’s dollars) from investors by showing them blueprints of a massive building 480 feet high with 48 stories. People were willing to give over their new money that the area’s oil boom had brought on only years…
