Why The World's Littlest Skyscraper Was A Massive Scam

Alright, is that in focus? I think so, I hope so. Well, I don't have much time left. It's the end of the day, I'm losing the light. I have to keep driving and then catch a flight soon. So I'm going to tell you a story, but I haven't been able to determine how true it is. And that's fine, and I'll tell you why that's fine, but it puts me in a bit of a difficult position because everyone I've met here in Wichita Falls, Texas, has been lovely. And this is a great story that sends tourists to your city.

That being said, this is the Newby-McMahon Building, the smallest

skyscraper

in the

world

. It is not a large

skyscraper

, it is only four stories high and its size is so small that it can barely be used as a building. Now, legend has it that when Wichita Falls was an oil boom town, in 1918, there was a

massive

rush of construction. Investors were pouring money into new buildings downtown, confident that the city would be prime real estate for decades to come. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The boom was followed by a bust and the Great Depression. But this building caused its investors more problems than most.

It costs $200,000, which is equivalent to about $3 million in today's money, and investors thought it was going to be 12 times higher because the plans they thought were marked in feet were actually in inches. No one noticed the little extra mark next to the numbers on the plans. So the new downtown skyscraper turned out to be only four stories high, not 48, and so narrow that it was almost unusable. The promoter, J.D. McMahon kept most of the money, all left over from having to build only a small building, and a local judge ruled that the plans were accurate.

The investors had gotten exactly what they had signed up for, exactly what they had paid for. The building was abandoned for a long time and was renovated in the early 21st century and is currently a furniture boutique and I spoke to the owner. - When we first took over this building with our store, the public was never allowed in this skyscraper and we wanted to open it. The engineers had to come in to make sure the floors could withstand constant occupancy and in fact they had to give us some weight and load limits and they had to put in an extra structural beam.

Whenever you have a multi-story building, according to city code, there must be one exit and one entrance. So, they had said, well, we have to have at least two staircases to allow for that. Well, if this building had two sets of stairs, it would literally be a building full of two sets of stairs and there would be no defined space. So, I think, as a commitment of our City, we have a state-of-the-art fire suppression system. The fire chief who comes to inspect it periodically tells me that if we ever catch fire, we won't have to worry about burning, but we will have to worry about drowning.

In the early '30s, this was engulfed in flames and so the floors were gone, the roof was gone and they boarded it up and it stayed that way for decades. We have some accounts from old newspapers and old documentation from people who were interviewed back then, who wanted the building demolished immediately because it was a scandal. You know, these people had been

scam

med and they were ashamed to have been

scam

med this way. However, it was not demolished because they really needed it for office space, so it was used. So we have documentation like that, but the original plans that he had supposedly given to his investors do not exist, as far as I know. - It's a great story.

So I started checking it and found nothing. This is what I did before I got here. I tracked down every article I could in every database I could access, but they were all too modern and the chain of references dried up, usually sometime in the '80s. There are references to a panel from "Ripley's Believe It or Not" from the 1920s, but I emailed the archivists at Ripley's and they told me their archives are incomplete. They don't have a copy of it. Nobody has a copy of it. And look, if we're being honest, "Ripley's Believe It or Not" is not a reliable primary source.

So when I got here, I went to the Wichita Falls library, many thanks to all the librarians who helped, and checked out the local newspaper from 1919. It wasn't digitized, so I had to look on microfilm and I scanned the headlines and back in time. While I was here, I couldn't find any mention of the building or the lawsuit. I found an article about the changing horizon. It makes no mention of a planned 48-story building. So it seems like the real estate scandal, and the subsequent lawsuit, surely should have been all over the news when it came to light, but maybe I missed it.

Maybe it was too small an item. In good times it might have been like that, or maybe I wasn't looking at the right dates. And look, this is a ridiculous building. On camera, he almost seems sensible, but here, it's very easy to agree that this building must have been a scam of some kind. So if I had to make a bet, I'd say that the scam part is likely, that someone showed up in the middle of boom times, sold a dodgy building to gullible investors, and walked away with the profits, is very, very plausible. . However, inches instead of feet are the detail of the story, I just don't know.

Surely investors would have realized that his gigantic skyscraper only had four floors and a couple of windows. They would surely have questioned the plans, so perhaps it was a joke by the townspeople a century ago that was reported as fact. Or perhaps the investors were in another state and were never able to closely examine the plans. Or maybe it's true and they were fooled by a smooth-talking scammer. There is a plausible answer to every skeptic's question about this and I'm not saying the story is false, just that I can't find primary sources. I can't find anything from that moment that is evidence for or against.

And if you can, don't tell me. Write an article, publish it somewhere authoritative, take a photo of the old newspaper and tweet it, update Wikipedia. I've reached the end of what I can do. But that's okay, and here's why it's okay. Because this is folklore. This is a story of tricksters. This is the same thing that appears in mythology around the

world

and throughout time. If you think you've heard something like this before, that's it. There are many stories like this. It's the monorail episode of "The Simpsons." All those media outlets and blogs that repeat and emphasize the story.

That is our modern oral tradition. That is transmitting stories, from person to person. In a world where making up outright lies for advertising revenue is a viable business model, this is a charming thing. It is a story. And as long as those articles say "according to legend" or "history says that," then I think it's fine. We are humans, we see things as part of a narrative. Margaret Atwood wrote, “in the end, we will all become stories,” and yes, this is a really good story. Alright, I hope that worked, because I don't have... enough time to get to Dallas.

Okay let's go.