The world's littlest skyscraper was a massive scam 

And to answer the question at the end: yes, I did make it to the airport in time!

it would be worth $3 million in london

Me on Tinder when I say I'm taller than 6"

Plot twist: The other 44 floors are under ground and the door is locked.

Tom, something to realize about small town newspapers... Small towns are competitive against each other, and the newspapers often act as boosters, only telling the good news. Having some prominent town citizens get lampooned for falling for a scam is a bad business model for a small-town newspaper. It doesn't surprise me that this story was not in the paper.

imagine that line on your gravestone "drowned in a house-fire" must be weird

Tom is actually standing immediately next to the building.

We were driving through Florida when we saw "Visit the biggest waterfall in Florida!" We paid $10 bucks for access when we finally located the "waterfall", It was a small creek with a sinkhole and the tiniest amount of water flowing into it.

I am a resident of Wichita falls and I have to say we love our skyscraper it may have been a scam but it's our scam I love how much attention our little town is getting recently.

I'd love to turn that into a residence and tell everyone I owned a skyscraper and I lived on the top 4 floors.

It’s not a skyscraper, it’s a skyscratcher.

I read it as 48” instead of 480” and I was so confused how they made a model building look so realistic

As someone whose mother grew up in Wichita Falls, I found it fitting how quickly Tom wanted to get out of Wichita Falls at the end.

I love how your thesis for this video is essentially “I couldn’t find any primary sources for this story, but I already booked a flight and an interview so screw you look at this cool tiny building”

When I'm teaching history to 9th graders, I define _apocryphal_ as "A story that probably isn't true, but is too good a story not to pass on." Which is kind of how folklore happens

Thank you, Tom, for championing Primary Sources. That’s the good kind of old school- doing due diligence to get your facts (and story) straight. Also thanks for the fun little bit of trivia- I had never previously heard of this “smallest skyscraper”, but will definitely try to see that someday!

Back in the 80's Canada went to the metric system. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out the measurement for construction as the industry was still producing in inches and feet but we were drawing in metric. The best cartoon was the bridge that was started in imperial on one side and metric on the other. In the middle they played catch-up with the materials.

As an engineer, I can firmly say that on the blueprints, you can add a note on the edge calling out what units you are using. Then you can place your dimensions all over the place without having to say 10' or 10". It just reads 10. I can TOTALLY see this happening.

"The boom was followed by a bust and by the great depression." Ouch.

The blue print probably only had the main floor and one floor drawn with 'all floors same as' written underneath.

That is the basic story I remember from growing up. In my 60's now and my grandparents lived there starting in about 1910. I have some old newspapers from the centennial (Wichita Falls Paper, Times and Record News). I'll look them up from storage and see if I can find what they mentioned about it, if it is in there. Will let you know if I find anything out, great video.

My personal guess is that they had plans that said "Each standard floor will be like this" and therefore they didn't have to state that there would only be four floors.

"In the end, we all become stories" well in the end this tale was only 4 stories, not 48

What I love about this (and his other) video(es) is that he is very up front about what he can, and can not, find in the way of supporting facts for these stories. Modern folklore seems to be severely underappreciated these days and Tom is bringing a lot of them into the light. The verifiability of them is less important than the telling of the folklore story. Safe travels Tom!!

I lived in the Wichita Falls area for many years. This story is told often, but then the details never get mentioned and everything else is vague. I've often wondered if it was because some notable person was involved and chose to have the details covered up.

0:05 "It is the end of the day, I'm losing the light, I gotta drive on and then catch a flight." Tom is spitting some proper bars here 🔥🔥🔥

Absolutely love your channel's whole vibe, Tom. Thoroughly enjoying the stuff you investigate and come up with. Candid journalistic no-nonsense matter of fact (or not as the case may be) keep up the great work.

My father has a particular phrase he is fond of. "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story." Seems it could be appropriate here.

*A short poem by Tom Scott:* I haven't got long; It is the end of the day, i'm losing the light. I've got to drive on, and then catch a flight

Was really hoping he'd end it with "Everyone ends up as a story, this one ended up as 4"

This is in my hometown and I've actually been in it. Its so incredibly tiny.

Thank you, Tom Scott! I live in Texas, and to see you report on this building (which I too went out of my way to visit) is much appreciated!

Tom: "ONE TAKE, ONE TAKE!"

If it was target of lawsuits, the city courthouse should have records.

As someone who has drafted a few blueprints, I could totally make this building as blueprint and hide the fact that it's a scam. Have a global blueprint for it's external dimensions, then use a sample floor blueprint to indicate what pattern would be repeated for each floor, and you can easily hide how many floors the building would have.

this made me smile so wide, I live in Wichita County. It's a funny story, and we're still a thriving community thanks to Sheppard AFB, it's the largest Air education and training base and they get people from around the world that come here for training. BTW, you're awesome Tom Scott

Tom trying to fact check this story: "impossible, perhaps the archives are incomplete"

I love how you ended saying we are all stories. I see a missed opportunity though. This building has become a story. A four story building! Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

I've seen other/anecdotal information suggesting that sometimes, a comparatively small building may be constructed as an architectural study in the type of materials and/or manner of construction, in order to inform a much larger project. It's always possible that a project never progressed beyond a "demonstration" building.

It looks really quaint, I wouldn't mind living there.

Lesson learned: Always double check the blueprints before investing $3 million

I was about three years old or so when I lived in Wichita Falls. I was very small for a human. Oddly, after leaving that small town in the Texas panhandle plains, I grew steadily to be several times that size. This should suggest that perhaps if they could transport the building away from that smallish town, it might grow to its proper size. It worked for me.

It's like the Stone Henge model in 'Spinal Tap', but in reverse! Eighteen inches should have been eighteen feet but the set builder made the set exactly according to the sketch on the napkin. The store should sell amplifiers that turn up to eleven!

Well done, I've lived in this town for most of my life and you've got the story right. It's funny that I just happen to cross this video by chance.

"Ripley's Believe It or Not is not a reliable primary source." How. Dare. You.

Tom Scott: "Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete." Ripley's Believe it or Not: "If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist."

Ah yes, my hometown of Wichita Falls. Famous for having the world's smallest skyscraper and putting Dr. Phil on the map. What a profound legacy!

I've seen stuff like this too many times. Usually the investors are cocky and trying to cut corners so they don't hire their own engineer or architect to review the plans.

I would love to have that as my house. "Why yes, my house is 4 stories tall"

Stuff like this makes me really appreciate historians. You went through a bunch of work to find an answer to such a minor question and came up blank anyway---how do we even know ANYTHING about history? It's impressive.

Thanks for sharing this with us. We appreciate you.

Im from not very far from Wichita Falls, born and raised, 30 years and ive never heard of this building

It's really cool seeing that someone like Tom Scott was in my town. I've seen that building so many times. Thanks for stopping in Wichita!

Mythology in the Bronze age: "The Thunder is the gods being angry!" Mythology now: "Some rich guys confused '' with ' ."

I appreciate all of your efforts and your honesty. Thank you for this fun little video :)

You've got such a great energy!

“I've sold skyscrapers to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!”

What a lovely and well spoken lady.

Thanks for sharing that story with us!

This is delightful! I grew up in the state of Arkansas in the US and there was a furniture store in a neighboring small town that would advertise itself as being located "in Sherwood's only skyscraper, two stories high!" :)

If every sky scraper is scraping the sky, then every time a taller one gets built the sky gets higher.

Me: Mom can we have a Skyscraper? Her: We have a Skyscraper at home The Skyscraper at home:

Techdiff talked about the guy who sold the Eiffel tower. Twice. I can totally believe that someone with tons of money and no understanding of how even to read a blueprint got scammed.

Plot Twist : The building actually has 48 stories and what we are seeing are the actual top 4 stories of the building. 1:15

Tom : the archives are incomplete. But tom, if an item does not appear on our records, it does not exist.

It's come full circle..my mom just accidentally purchased miniature rolls of toilet paper on eBay...

Thanks for great narrative, being on site, relative photos.

Thanks Tom. You're great.

"I've got about... not enough time" me everyday, after 5 hours of procrastinating

This building looks like a normal residential building in the Netherlands, Amsterdam specifically

Great story tom told with great entuseasim for the tag line.

In my experience, which is fairly extensive, more problems on a construction project are caused by people not reading the blueprints carefully, than any other single factor.

I feel like this is a challenge that CGPgrey would spend a year or two on...

Similarly to the feet/inches story, every city has a story about a university library that was designed without considering the weight of the books, or a hotel with a pool without considering the weight of the water. It's funny enough to get spread around as common lore without any basis.

Awesome you were here now someone else can tell my kids this story. As with everything they swear they never heard it before till it comes from someone other than dad. Hate to have missed you.

I love that you are there I was stationed at Sheppard AFB just outside of Wichita Falls and seen that all the time

I think the inches -> feet part makes a lot more sense if you apply it to the width instead of the height. I agree with Tom that a planned building of 40+ stories would have made the contemporary news, as the biggest buildings being built at the time were 10 stories at most. I also don't buy that a 40+ story skyscraper could have been pitched as costing $200K. Even for 1919 money, that is laughably small. For reference, the Kent hotel, an 8-story building that was constructed in the same year and is mentioned in the skyline article shown in the video, was written about as costing $600K. Maybe the promoter sold them a building at 4 stories tall costing $200,000, but scammed them by telling them it would be 50 ft wide when it's only 50 inches wide (or whatever the number.) If an 8-story hotel costs $600K, then a 4-story building for $200K seems reasonable, and also lines up with the sizes of the buildings going up in Wichita Falls at the time (in 1919 the aforementioned hotel was built along with 2 ten-story banks and another 6-story office building, all of which have contemporary newspaper accounts of their construction with no mention of any 40 story building being planned.) Before all these buildings went up the largest building in the area was the Westland Hotel which was 5 stories in height and located basically across the street from where this "Littlest Skyscraper" is built today. A building twelve times the height of this one would have been ludicrous and cost a lot more than $200K.

"I think the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. That tended to understate the hugeness of the object." - This is Spinal Tap

lmao I was thinking about Marge vs The Monorail this entire video, so glad you referenced it

I've been there! I was in town for a real estate shoot, and having driven so far, about 140 miles, I drove around town to see the sights. I took some photos of that building. Glad it wasn't demolished! And look at the brick detail in the facade. That tiny building has more style than most new buildings today.

"and oh how they danced, the little children of Stone'enge. Beneath the haunted moon for fear that daybreak might come too soon" *mandolin plucks*

3:43 "Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete."

Your dialogue is amazing!

Anyone else thinking of the Stonehenge prop in "This Is Spinal Tap"?

I've sold skyscrapers to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!

"Tom Visits Small Towns And Ruins Local History" should be a series at this point

Great story telling , dude ... loved it .

Scott; you'd be surprised about what gets overlooked by contractors, developers, investors etc... Not scrutinizing the plans seems like a tale as old as time

I read the title and was just like.. So a building? Watched the video and now i just want to know the truth. Why do you exist building.

This almost feels like a Two Of These People Are Lying video where Tom is trying to judge Gary's story on its truthfulness.

i know this is an older video but as someone who works in construction i can assure you they would definitely miss that sort of obvious detail and much more.

6:07 correction: its 4 stories. :P

The train at the end was a scam as well. The investor thought "two cars" meant it'd have 2 passenger cars, but it just meant two engine cars. Now that train just wanders along the countryside, serving no purpose.

I’m from small town Texas so I don’t find it surprising that a story about local investors getting scammed was not reported. Small town papers’ major revenue source is advertising from local businesses so those businesses can elicit a suppressive effect on the news. As long as a story doesn’t really affect the general public, which this one doesn’t, the local paper or papers of the day could have hushed it up.

I hope you enjoyed your time here in Texas!

It’s ironic in a state where everything is supposedly the ‘biggest’ that this exists. Thanks Tom!

5:35 "I've reached the end of what I can do." Tell that to CGP grey.

3:46 "if an item does not appear in our records... its does not exist" - librarian with a sword

"Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they're forgotten."

You’ve got this McFadden vibe. I love it