The Sam Kee Building, located at 8 West Pender Street in Vancouver

Vancouver

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, British Columbia

British Columbia

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, is noteworthy for being the shallowest commercial building in the world, according to Guinness Book of Records.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Sam Kee Company—one of the wealthiest firms in Chinatown—purchased a standard-sized lot in 1903. The basement extends beneath the sidewalk and originally housed public baths, while the ground floor was used for offices and shops and the top story for living quarters.

In 1912, however, Vancouver widened Pender Street and expropriated 24 feet (7.3 m) of the above-ground portion of the property—effectively (or so it was first believed) making conventional commercial use of the remaining frontage impractical, if not impossible. In 1913, the architects Brown and Gillam designed this narrow, steel-framed building's ground-floor depth (from storefront to rear of building) to measure 4'11" (1.5 m), with a second-floor depth (from bay window to rear) of 6' (183 cm).

Historical renovation of the building was designed by Soren Rasmussen, and was completed in 1986.

The building is considered the shallowest commercial building in the world by the Guinness Book of Records and Ripley's Believe it or Not!

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, but in recent years this status has been challenged by the "Skinny Building" in Pittsburgh, which measures only 5'2" (157 cm) in depth.

The dispute centres around the fact that while the Sam Kee Building's base is 4'11" from sidewalk to rear of building, its second story's bay windows (which overhang the sidewalk beneath) increase total depth to 6'; Pittsburgh's "Skinny Building" is 5'2" wide on all floors.