![]() They had signed off on the blueprints that showed the building’s dimensions were in inches, and any effort to find McMahon to get their money back failed. The investors tried to sue but discovered they had no case. The blueprints had an extra apostrophe next to each dimension, turning what they assumed was square feet into what was actually square inches. When the blueprints were more closely scrutinized, investors found that they had given money, not for a 480-foot high structure, but for a 480-inch high structure. By the time anyone realized that the building would stay a skinny, four-story structure, McMahon had skipped town and left with the investors’ money. It wasn’t quite what investors had expected. There weren’t even any stairs in the building to get to each small floor. It was small, had only a front door, was four stories, and had two windows on the front of each floor with three windows on one side. It was McMahon’s building, and he didn’t own the land.īut the building was odd. But Jones had no idea the building was being constructed on her land. It was assumed that Mabel Jones was cashing in on the need for office space because of the oil boom and that she attached her building to her Uncle’s two-room structure. One day, a construction crew and materials showed up on the site, and a building was soon constructed. Next to Newby’s building was a vacant lot that was owned by Newby’s niece, Mabel Jones, who lived in Oklahoma. People were willing to give over their new money that the area’s oil boom had brought on only years before. 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. ![]() 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. McMahon was looking for investors for a bold new project. One of those businessmen was JD McMahon, a petroleum landman from Philadelphia. Nothing happened for 13 years until Newby rented one of his rooms to six businessmen in 1919. ![]() 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. The red brick building is four stories, 10 feet wide and 16 feet long, 40 feet high, and has 118 square feet per floor. The world’s littlest skyscraper is officially called the Newby–McMahon Building. There is an interesting tale behind the structure that is called “The Littlest Skyscraper in the World.” 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. In Wichita Falls, Texas, there is a strange building that is four stories tall and very skinny.
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