Probably this one. Dubbed the “world’s tiniest skyscraper”.
The building itself is structurally sound—that’s not the flaw. In fact, it has stood for over a century. But the devil is in the details.
This building was constructed by J.D. McMahon—a man as morally crooked as his creation. Yet, he was a fascinating character.
In 1919, McMahon swindled the residents of Wichita Falls out of $200,000 (equivalent to $4 million today) through a simple but clever scam.
At the time, Wichita County, Texas, was experiencing a petroleum boom. As new residents flocked to the area, Wichita Falls became an economic hub, and demand for office space skyrocketed. McMahon, who owned an oil construction company operating in one of the town’s buildings, proposed an addition on the vacant lot next door to meet this need.
His vision? A grand skyscraper—a monument befitting the booming city. The idea was met with enthusiasm, and eager investors quickly handed over $200,000 to fund the project. McMahon, of course, used his own construction company to build it.
But when the “skyscraper” was completed, investors were stunned to see it stood a mere four stories tall—just 40 feet high, 12 feet long, and 9 feet wide. To add insult to injury, the elevator company McMahon had hired backed out, leaving only an external ladder to access the top floor. A narrow staircase was later added, but it consumed nearly 25% of the building’s interior space due to the structure’s absurdly cramped dimensions.
Outraged, the investors tried to sue McMahon—until they realized the fine print. His blueprints had specified a height of 480 inches (40 feet), not 480 feet. They had overlooked the details before signing, leaving them with no legal recourse.
Shortly after construction wrapped up, McMahon vanished—presumably with most of the $200,000—and was never heard from again. The town was left with the embarrassing Newby-McMahon Building, which changed hands multiple times over the years.
Today, it houses an antique store and an artist’s studio. Despite its dubious origins, the building has been designated a Texas Historic Landmark, added to the National Register of Historic Places, and remains a quirky fixture in Wichita Falls’ Depot Square Historic District.
The national oil company of Canada, created by Pierre Trudeau, was PetroCanada. They built a huge office tower in Calgary to house their head office. The design was very unique and included a slanted glass roof that covered the level the company chose for their executive offices.
The first winter in the tower, they discovered that ice and snow built up on the slanted roof. When the sun came out, the ice and snow started to melt and huge sheets slid off the roof and crashed down onto the sidewalks and roads beneath. The sound of the slide was like a freight train roaring over the roof!
After 9/11 PetroCanada decided it was too risky to house their chief executives on the top floor of the building and moved them to a lower floor. Companies who subsequently rented that floor did not stay there long!
I was contracting to one of the companies who rented that space and was totally freaked out the first time I experienced “the slide”.
This happened at a company I worked for years ago, Not long after we moved into a new building, the employees on one side of the building starting complaining about being cold all the time, and on the other side of the building they complained about it being too hot. Adjusting the thermostats not only didn’t solve the problem, but seemed to make it worse.
The company hired an HVAC company to fix the problem. They went all over the building and measured the temperatures and airflow, then adjusted the heating and cooling system. It didn’t fix the problem. They brought in the HVAC company again, and they re-measured things.
This time they said the problem was that the building was oriented with an east-west exposure, but the HVAC system was a type meant for buildings with north-south exposures, so it wasn’t up to the task. They tried to adjust things once more, but again it didn’t fix the problem.
The employees were getting frustrated. No place in the building was at a comfortable temperature, and every time someone tried to do something about it, the hot side would get hotter and the cold side would get colder.
Finally they brought in the biggest HVAC expert in the area. Rather than start by measuring temperatures and airflow, the guy sat down with the blueprints. He found the problem pretty quickly:
The thermostats that controlled the west side of the building were on the east side, and the thermostats that controlled the east side of the building were on the west side.
One that isn’t the worst but that I have experienced a lot first hand is the Arts Tower in Sheffield University.
Opened in 1965, it was widely regarded as an excellent building of the time, even lauded by English Heritage as beautiful and elegant, very unusual for them regarding a modern tower block building.
However. You may notice the top couple of floors are different. And those floors are the problem.
When it was designed a lot of work went into checking every possible aspect, including wind tunnel experiments to ensure such a tall building was ok in fairly windy city.
But when they were part way through construction, somebody realised that if it was a little taller, it would be the tallest university building the UK. So they decided to add two more floors.
But the tests, including critically wind tunnel tests, were not fully re-done on this new design, just enough to make sure it wouldn’t be unstable with this added height.
What they missed was that the changed design surprisingly altered wind flow at all levels, including ground level. In a common wind direction, there was now a vortex forms right in front of the main doors, making it almost impossible to use these!
On quite a number of days each year everyone had to use small side doors, and anyone passing in front risked losing papers etc to be scattered by this vortex.
I believe this is now not the case as recent other construction has changed the airflow patterns, but for decades, including when I was studying there, it was a significant problem.
