Wichita Falls' 'World's Littlest Skyscraper' Is a Monument to a Swindle
In 1919, Wichita Falls investors put $200,000 into a downtown office tower. What they got became Ripley's 'world's littlest skyscraper.'
On the corner of Seventh and La Salle streets in downtown Wichita Falls stands a narrow red brick tower that keeps drawing curious visitors. It is the Newby-McMahon Building, better known as the "world's littlest skyscraper." Its story, as told by the city's convention and visitors bureau on its Discover Wichita Falls page, is a lesson in reading the fine print.
A crowded boomtown
In 1919, Wichita Falls was riding the first of several regional oil booms. Office space was so scarce that businessmen worked wherever they could find room. The bureau says "coat pocket" business addresses were common.
Into that market stepped a building engineer from Philadelphia who was living at the Newby Hotel. He proposed a $200,000 office building on the lot next door, and investors lined up to buy stock. Contracts were signed, money changed hands and construction began.
Inches, not feet
According to the bureau's account, no one noticed that the blueprints, which the investors read in feet, were carried out in inches. By the time the building was finished, the engineer had checked out of the hotel and left town with most of the $200,000.
The bureau calls it a swindle, and some details remain uncertain. It says even the man's given name "has been lost to history." The Dallas Morning News, retelling the story in 2020, named him as J.D. McMahon, "supposedly from Philadelphia," and described the result as a four-story brick building only 10 feet wide and 18 feet long. The paper called it a story "passed down for a hundred years," and reported that the building burned in a 1931 fire before it was later restored. Still, the result is easy to see. During the 1920s, Robert Ripley's syndicated column "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" featured the building as "the world's littlest skyscraper," and the nickname stuck.
Visiting today
The building, at 701 La Salle St., is part of the Depot Square Historic District, a Texas Historic Landmark. Visitors can climb to the top, though the bureau warns to watch your head. An antique shop, Hello Again, fills the ground floor. Owner Jan Saville keeps a wall map where visitors mark their hometowns with pins. The bureau says they come from almost every country in the world.
The moral
Boom times make people eager, and eager people skip the details. The investors of 1919 wanted to believe, and they did not check the plans. Their mistake now stands in brick on a downtown corner, a reminder to read what you sign and ask questions before you hand over money. Wichita Falls has made the best of it, turning an embarrassment into a stop worth the drive.
Hero photo: Travis K. Witt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (license).
