Newby-McMahon Building, Four-story brick building in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas, United States
The Newby-McMahon Building is a four-story red brick and cast stone structure at the corner of Seventh and La Salle streets in downtown Wichita Falls. It stands 40 feet (12 m) tall, 18 feet (5.5 m) deep and 10 feet (3 m) wide, with a flat roof and paired windows stacked in vertical columns above a glazed ground-floor doorway.
Augustus Newby built the original four-story brick Newby Building in 1906 near the railroad depot. In 1919 J.D. McMahon, a Philadelphia petroleum landman whose firm rented offices there, collected about $200,000 from investors for a high-rise annex, with blueprints listing the height as 480 inches rather than 480 feet. The finished 40-foot building embarrassed the city, and a local judge upheld the contract.
The building's nickname comes from Robert Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" column, which featured it in the 1920s as "the world's littlest skyscraper". Today the ground floor holds an antiques shop and an artist's studio, and the building is a Texas Historic Landmark within the Depot Square Historic District.
Interior rooms are very small and unsuitable for regular office use, as steep stairs take up about a quarter of each floor. Visitors should expect narrow passages and limited movement space, since the footprint per level covers only 108 square feet (10 square meters).
Courts upheld the contract after completion because investors had signed blueprints clearly showing inch rather than foot measurements. McMahon had technically acted correctly even though he misled investors, and he kept the money raised.
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