WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-GB 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.421 All right, is that focused? 2 00:00:02.421 --> 00:00:04.140 Think so, hope so. 3 00:00:04.140 --> 00:00:05.770 Good, I haven't got long. 4 00:00:05.770 --> 00:00:07.783 It is the end of the day, I'm losing the light. 5 00:00:07.783 --> 00:00:10.010 I've got to drive on and then catch a flight soon. 6 00:00:10.010 --> 00:00:11.460 So I'm going to tell you a story, 7 00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:14.230 but I have not been able to work out how much of it is true. 8 00:00:14.230 --> 00:00:16.020 And that's okay, and I'll tell you why that's okay, 9 00:00:16.020 --> 00:00:17.940 but it does put me in a bit of a difficult position 10 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:19.630 because everyone that I've met here 11 00:00:19.630 --> 00:00:21.800 in Wichita Falls, Texas, has been lovely. 12 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:25.063 And this is a great story that sends tourists to their town. 13 00:00:25.063 --> 00:00:28.520 So, with that said, this is the Newby-McMahon Building, 14 00:00:28.520 --> 00:00:30.590 the World's Littlest Skyscraper. 15 00:00:30.590 --> 00:00:33.290 It's not much of a skyscraper, it's only four storeys tall, 16 00:00:33.290 --> 00:00:37.050 and its footprint is so small that it is barely usable as a building. 17 00:00:37.050 --> 00:00:39.140 Now the legend goes that back when Wichita Falls 18 00:00:39.140 --> 00:00:41.290 was an oil boom town, 1918, 19 00:00:41.290 --> 00:00:43.210 there was a massive construction rush. 20 00:00:43.210 --> 00:00:45.900 Investors were pouring money into new downtown buildings, 21 00:00:45.900 --> 00:00:48.070 confident that the town would be prime real estate 22 00:00:48.070 --> 00:00:49.393 for decades to come. 23 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:51.760 Unfortunately, it wasn't. 24 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:54.820 The boom was followed by a bust and by the Great Depression. 25 00:00:54.820 --> 00:00:58.460 But this building caused its investors more trouble than most. 26 00:00:58.460 --> 00:01:02.640 It cost $200,000, which is about $3 million in today's money 27 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:06.540 and the investors thought that it was going to be 12 times as tall 28 00:01:06.540 --> 00:01:09.160 because the blueprints they thought were marked in feet 29 00:01:09.160 --> 00:01:10.900 were actually in inches. 30 00:01:10.900 --> 00:01:14.013 No one noticed the little extra mark next to the numbers on the plans. 31 00:01:14.013 --> 00:01:19.110 So the new downtown skyscraper turned out to be only four storeys tall and not 48, 32 00:01:19.110 --> 00:01:21.220 and so narrow it was almost unusable. 33 00:01:21.220 --> 00:01:24.080 The developer, J.D. McMahon, ran off with most of the money, 34 00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:27.260 all that was left over from only having to construct a tiny building, 35 00:01:27.270 --> 00:01:30.060 and a local judge ruled that the blueprints were accurate. 36 00:01:30.060 --> 00:01:32.990 The investors had got exactly what they'd signed off on, 37 00:01:32.990 --> 00:01:34.730 exactly what they paid for. 38 00:01:34.730 --> 00:01:35.997 The building sat abandoned for a long time 39 00:01:35.997 --> 00:01:37.940 and it was renovated in the early 21st century 40 00:01:37.940 --> 00:01:39.680 and these days, it's a furniture boutique 41 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:41.020 and I talked to the owner. 42 00:01:41.020 --> 00:01:44.410 - When we first took over this building with our shop, 43 00:01:44.410 --> 00:01:49.100 this skyscraper was never allowed to be entered by the public 44 00:01:49.100 --> 00:01:51.000 and we wanted to open it up. 45 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:52.890 The engineers had to come 46 00:01:52.890 --> 00:01:56.780 to make sure the floors could sustain constant occupancy 47 00:01:56.780 --> 00:02:00.720 and in fact, they did have to give us some weight and load limits 48 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:03.680 and they did have to put in an additional structural beam. 49 00:02:03.690 --> 00:02:05.910 Whenever you have a multi-storey building, 50 00:02:05.910 --> 00:02:10.750 by City code, there must be an egress and entrance. 51 00:02:10.750 --> 00:02:15.993 So, they had said, well, we must have at least two staircases to allow for that. 52 00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:19.860 Well, if this building had two sets of stairs, 53 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:23.050 it would literally be a building full of two sets of stairs 54 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:26.550 and there would be no defined space whatsoever. 55 00:02:26.550 --> 00:02:28.780 So, I think, as the compromise from our City, 56 00:02:28.780 --> 00:02:32.270 we do have a state-of-the-art fire suppression system. 57 00:02:32.270 --> 00:02:34.950 The fire marshal that comes to inspect it periodically 58 00:02:34.950 --> 00:02:37.400 tells me that if we do ever catch on fire, 59 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:39.300 we will not have to worry about burning, 60 00:02:39.300 --> 00:02:41.696 but we might have to worry about drowning. 61 00:02:42.950 --> 00:02:45.210 In the early '30s, this was engulfed in flames 62 00:02:45.210 --> 00:02:47.440 and so the floors were gone, the roof was gone 63 00:02:47.440 --> 00:02:49.930 and it got boarded up and it stood that way for decades. 64 00:02:49.930 --> 00:02:52.720 We do have some old newspaper accounts 65 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:58.480 and some old documentation of people that were interviewed back then, 66 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:02.860 how they wanted the building to be demolished immediately 67 00:03:02.860 --> 00:03:05.120 because it was a scandal. 68 00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:07.570 You know, these people had been ripped off 69 00:03:07.570 --> 00:03:11.490 and they were embarrassed about being duped like this. 70 00:03:11.490 --> 00:03:15.940 However, it wasn't demolished because they really needed it for office space 71 00:03:15.940 --> 00:03:17.140 so it was used. 72 00:03:17.150 --> 00:03:19.500 So we do have some documentation like that, 73 00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:23.920 but the original plans that allegedly he had given 74 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:27.600 to his investors, they don't exist, as far as I know. 75 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:28.880 - It's a great story. 76 00:03:28.880 --> 00:03:31.780 So I started to fact-check it and I came up blank. 77 00:03:31.780 --> 00:03:32.910 Here's what I did before getting here. 78 00:03:32.910 --> 00:03:36.220 I tracked down every article I could on every database I could access, 79 00:03:36.220 --> 00:03:38.880 but they were all too modern and the chain of references ran out, 80 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:40.780 usually somewhere in the '80s. 81 00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:44.300 There are references to a "Ripley's Believe It or Not" panel from the 1920s, 82 00:03:44.300 --> 00:03:46.760 but I emailed the archivists at Ripley's and they said 83 00:03:46.760 --> 00:03:49.430 their archives are incomplete. They don't have a copy of it. 84 00:03:49.430 --> 00:03:50.860 No one has a copy of it. 85 00:03:50.860 --> 00:03:52.630 And look, if we're honest, "Ripley's Believe It or Not" 86 00:03:52.630 --> 00:03:54.620 is not a reliable primary source. 87 00:03:54.620 --> 00:03:57.640 So, when I got here, I went to the Wichita Falls Library over there, 88 00:03:57.640 --> 00:03:59.280 thank you so much to all the librarians who helped, 89 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:02.220 and I looked through the local newspaper from 1919. 90 00:04:02.220 --> 00:04:06.000 It's not been digitised so I had to hunt through microfilm and scan headlines 91 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:07.820 and in the time I had here, 92 00:04:07.820 --> 00:04:11.150 I couldn't find a mention of the building or of the lawsuit at all. 93 00:04:11.150 --> 00:04:13.550 I did find an article about the changing skyline. 94 00:04:13.550 --> 00:04:17.060 It has no mention of a planned 48-storey building. 95 00:04:17.060 --> 00:04:20.470 So, it feels like the real estate scandal, the lawsuit after, 96 00:04:20.470 --> 00:04:22.740 should have been all over the news when it came out, surely, 97 00:04:22.740 --> 00:04:25.220 but maybe I missed it. Maybe it was too small an article. 98 00:04:25.220 --> 00:04:26.610 In boom times it might have been, 99 00:04:26.610 --> 00:04:28.170 or maybe I wasn't looking at the right dates. 100 00:04:28.170 --> 00:04:30.610 And look, this is a ridiculous building. 101 00:04:30.610 --> 00:04:33.340 On camera, it almost looks sensible but standing here, 102 00:04:33.340 --> 00:04:36.120 it is very easy to agree that this building, 103 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:38.380 must have been a scam of some sort. 104 00:04:38.380 --> 00:04:40.040 So, if I was to place a bet, 105 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:42.630 I would say that the scam part is likely, 106 00:04:42.630 --> 00:04:44.850 that someone came along in the middle of boom times, 107 00:04:44.850 --> 00:04:47.010 sold a dodgy building to gullible investors 108 00:04:47.010 --> 00:04:51.140 and ran off with the proceeds, is very, very plausible. 109 00:04:51.140 --> 00:04:54.540 The inches instead of feet detail of the story, though, 110 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:55.430 I just don't know. 111 00:04:55.430 --> 00:04:57.220 Surely the investors would have noticed 112 00:04:57.220 --> 00:04:59.640 that their giant skyscraper only had four floors 113 00:04:59.640 --> 00:05:00.473 and a couple of windows. 114 00:05:00.473 --> 00:05:02.130 Surely they'd have questioned the plans, 115 00:05:02.130 --> 00:05:05.280 so maybe that was a joke from the townsfolk a century ago 116 00:05:05.280 --> 00:05:06.320 that got reported as fact. 117 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:08.540 Or maybe the investors were off in another state 118 00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:10.330 and never got a close look at the blueprints. 119 00:05:10.330 --> 00:05:14.990 Or maybe it's true and they were taken in by a smooth-talking scammer. 120 00:05:14.990 --> 00:05:18.680 There is a plausible answer for every skeptic's question about this 121 00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:21.940 and I am not saying that the story is false, 122 00:05:21.950 --> 00:05:24.160 just that I can't find primary sources. 123 00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:27.380 I can't find anything from the time that is evidence for it or against it. 124 00:05:27.380 --> 00:05:29.670 And if you can, don't tell me. 125 00:05:29.670 --> 00:05:31.610 Write an article, post somewhere authoritative, 126 00:05:31.610 --> 00:05:33.790 take a picture of the old newspaper and tweet it out, 127 00:05:33.790 --> 00:05:34.910 update Wikipedia. 128 00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:37.520 I've reached the end of what I can do. 129 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:40.033 But that's fine, and here's why it's fine. 130 00:05:40.033 --> 00:05:42.510 Because this is folklore. This is a trickster story. 131 00:05:42.510 --> 00:05:44.420 This is the same thing that appears in mythology 132 00:05:44.420 --> 00:05:45.810 from across the world and across time. 133 00:05:45.810 --> 00:05:48.340 If you think you've heard something like this before, 134 00:05:48.340 --> 00:05:49.173 you have. 135 00:05:49.173 --> 00:05:50.710 There are a lot of stories like it. 136 00:05:50.710 --> 00:05:53.020 It's the monorail episode of "The Simpsons." 137 00:05:53.020 --> 00:05:56.410 All those news outlets and blogs repeating and emphasising the tale. 138 00:05:56.410 --> 00:05:58.210 That's our modern oral tradition. 139 00:05:58.210 --> 00:06:01.030 That's passing on stories, person to person to person. 140 00:06:01.030 --> 00:06:04.270 In a world where making up complete lies to get ad revenue 141 00:06:04.270 --> 00:06:06.450 is a viable business model, 142 00:06:06.450 --> 00:06:07.790 this is kind of charming. 143 00:06:07.790 --> 00:06:10.280 It's a story. And as long as those articles say, 144 00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:13.490 "according to legend", or "the tale goes that", 145 00:06:13.490 --> 00:06:15.120 then I think that's fine. 146 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.250 We're human, we see things as part of a narrative. 147 00:06:18.250 --> 00:06:22.890 Margaret Atwood wrote: "in the end, we'll all become stories", 148 00:06:22.890 --> 00:06:26.803 and yeah, this is a really good story. 149 00:06:29.990 --> 00:06:31.030 All right, hope that worked, 150 00:06:31.030 --> 00:06:36.030 'cause I've got about... not enough time to get to Dallas. 151 00:06:36.050 --> 00:06:37.050 All right, let's go.