Collyer brothers

Homer Lusk Collyer (November 1881 - March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 1885 - March 1947) were two US brothers who became famous because of their reclusiveness, filth and compulsive hoarding. The brothers are often cited as a paradigmatic example of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD, as well as Disposophobia, or fear of throwing anything away.

Contents

1 Family 2 Recluses 3 Public Scrutiny 4 Homer Collyer Found Dead 5 House contents 6 Langley Collyer Found Dead 7 Contents of House 8 Reference 9 Selected New York Times coverage 10 External links

Family

The Collyer brothers were sons of Herman Livingston Collyer (1857-1923), a Manhattan gynecologist, and Susie Gage Frost (1856-1929); the Collyer family traced its roots to the Mayflower in the 17th century. They had a daughter, Susan, who died as an infant in 1880. The family lived in a three-story townhouse at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at 128th Street) in Harlem, New York City, New York. The entire family was erudite and well educated; the boys' mother maintained a strong interest in the classics, and both sons attended Columbia University, which in this period had just relocated to its present-day Morningside Heights campus, on a small hill just west of Harlem, about a ten-minute walk from the Collyer house. Much of the area was still semi-rural; the first New York City Subway, the IRT, opened only in 1904 and still hadn't been extended this far uptown. Homer obtained a degree in engineering, while Langley became an Admiralty lawyer, although he mainly concentrated on being an inventor. He also played the piano and became a self-styled musician with long, flowing hair--a comparative rarity in this era. (See photo) Over the years, as both brothers' eccentricities intensified, Langley tinkered with various inventions, such as a device to vacuum the insides of pianos or a Model-T Ford adapted to run off electricity.

Dr. Herman Collyer abandoned his family in 1909, and the two brothers, still in their twenties, decided to continue living in the house with their mother. When Collyer père died in 1923, his wife inherited all of his furniture, medical equipment and books and moved them to the Harlem house. Susie Collyer died in 1929 and the brothers inherited everything. But over the previous fifteen years or so, Harlem had changed drastically. When Dr. Collyer moved into the house at 2078 Fifth Avenue, the neighborhood had been a mixture of middle-class and well-to-do, whose townhouses had themselves gradually displaced much larger 19th century estates owned by eminent figures such as James Roosevelt, father of Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, in 1910, a brief economic downtown prompted despairing real estate agents and landlords to rent to African-Americans, who had previously been excluded. With the coming of World War I, the black population of New York quickly increased; this, in conjunction with white flight made Harlem virtually all-black by the 1920s. By this time the Collyer brothers, though only in their forties, had long since ensconced themselves in their townhouse. As the neighborhood's character changed, the brothers became an anachronistic curiosity and withdrew from the world at large even further.

Recluses

Burglars frequently tried to break into the house because of unfounded rumors of valuables, and neighborhood youths had developed a fondness for throwing rocks at the windows. As the brothers' fears increased, so did their eccentric lifestyle. They boarded up the windows, and Langley set about using his engineering skills to set up booby traps. Their gas, telephone, electricity and water having been turned off because of their failure to pay the bills, the brothers took to warming the large house using only a small kerosene heater. For a while, Langley attempted to generate his own energy by means of a car engine. Langley began to wander outside at night; he fetched their water from a post in a park four blocks away (presumably Mount Morris Park, renamed Marcus Garvey Park in 1973.) He also dragged home countless pieces of abandoned junk that aroused his interest. In 1933, Homer, already crippled by rheumatism, went blind. Langley devised a diet of one hundred oranges a week, along with black bread and peanut butter. He also began to hoard newspapers.

Public Scrutiny

The Collyer brothers were first mentioned in the newspapers in 1938, when they rebuffed a real estate agent who had been eyeing the house. The New York Times repeated neighborhood rumors to the effect that the brothers lived in some sort of "Orientalist splendor" and were sitting on vast piles of cash, afraid to deposit it in a bank. Neither rumor was true; the brothers were certainly not broke, although eventually they would have been since neither of them had worked for decades. They drew media attention again in 1942 when they got in trouble with the bank after refusing to pay the mortgage on their house. The Bowery Savings Bank began eviction procedures and sent over a cleanup crew. At this point, Langley began ranting at the workers, prompting the neighbors to summon the police. When the police attempted to force their way by smashing down the front door, they were stymied by a sheer wall of junk piled from the floor to the ceiling. Without comment, Langely made out a check for $6700 (about $90,000 in today's money), paying off the mortgage in full at one stroke. He ordered everyone off the premises, and withdrew from outside scrutiny once more.

Homer Collyer Found Dead

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd police precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house. A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a very difficult time getting into the house at first. There was no doorbell or telephone; the doors were locked, and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. Eventually, an emergency squad of seven men had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. (Manhattan's streets have no alleys, so all trash removal is done in front.) The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman, William Baker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue-and-white bathrobe. Homer's matted, grey hair reached down to his shoulders, and his head was resting on his knees.

Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Arthur C. Allen confirmed Homer's identity and vouchsafed that the elder brother had been dead for no more than about ten hours; consequently, Homer could not have been the source of the stench wafting from the house. Foul play was ruled out: Homer had died from the combined effects of malnutrition, dehydration and cardiac arrest. By this time, the mystery had attracted a crowd of about 600 onlookers, curious about the junk and the smell. But Langley was nowhere to be found.

House contents

In their quest to find Langley, the police began searching the house, an arduous task that required them to remove the prodigious quantity of junk amassed in the house. It included rope, baby carriages, rakes, umbrellas, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, the folding top of a horsedrawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, a doll carriage, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a checkerboard, a child's chair (the brothers had been lifelong bachelors and childless), pinup girl photos, thousands of books about medicine and engineering, human organs pickled in jars, one British and six American flags, 14 pianos, a clavichord, two organs, and, of course, countless additional bundles of newspapers, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer had died, police also found 34 bank account books with a total of $3,007.18. On the following day, the police came back and found a potato peeler, a beaded lampshade, the chassis of the old Model-T Langley had been tinkering with, children's toys and more than six tons of newspapers, magazines and wood. Most of it was deemed worthless and set out curbside for the sanitation department to haul away; a few items were put into storage. The ongoing search turned up a further assortment of guns and ammunition. For weeks there was no sign of Langley.

On Saturday, March 30, false rumors circulated to the effect that Langley had been seen aboard a bus heading for Atlantic City, but a manhunt along the New Jersey shore turned up nothing. Two days later, the police continued digging through the house, removing 3,000 more books, several outdated phone books, a horse's jawbone, a Steinway piano, an early X-ray machine, and even more bundles of newspapers. At this point, more than nineteen pounds of junk had been removed--just from the ground floor of the three-story brownstone. Still unable to find Langley, the police whittled away at the brothers' stockpile for another week, removing a breathtaking 103 tons of rubbish from the house. Although a good deal of the junk had been crammed into the house from their father's medical practice, a considerable portion of it consisted of items that had been castoffs to begin with, collected by Langley on his various forays over the years.

Langley Collyer Found Dead

Finally, on April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the dead body of Langley Collyer. It turned out he was only ten feet from where Homer had died. His partially decomposed corpse was being set upon by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Langley had been attempting to bring food to Homer, who, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.

In 1942, the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune had interviewed Langley. In response to a query about the bundles of newspapers, Langley replied, "I am saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news."

Contents of House

In total, police and workmen took 136 tons of garbage out of the house. What was salvageable from it fetched less than $2000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000, of which $20,000 worth was in the form of personalty (jewelry, cash, securities and the like). Eventually the house was torn down as a fire hazard. Sources vary as to the precise assemblage of junk; one of the most extensive enumerations is as follows. (Some of these items may have been listed above).

• more than 25,000 books alone (2500 just in the law library)
• painted portraits
• Mrs. Collyer’s hope chests
• tapestries and hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric
• stockpiles of guns, ammunition, bayonets and sabers;
• 14 pianos (grand and upright)
• banjos, violins, organs, bugles, and accordions
• a gramophone and records; chandeliers
• clocks
• plaster busts
• bikes
• bowling balls
• camera equipment.

And in addition to the bundles of paper, there was a great deal of garbage. The house itself, having never been maintained, was also decaying: the roof was leaking and some walls had already caved in, showering bricks and mortar on the rooms below.

Reference

• Franz Lidz, Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders: An Urban Historical ISBN 158234311X

Selected New York Times coverage

• New York Times, August 16, 1923, page 15, "Obituary Herman L. Collyer"
• New York Times, April 5, 1939, page 26, "Gas company seizes meters of 'hermits'"
• New York Times, August 05, 1942, page 21, "Mortgage on recluses' home is foreclosed, but legendary brothers still hide within "
• New York Times, August 08, 1942, page 13, "Bank and Collyers declare a truce"
• New York Times, September 30, 1942, page 24, "Collyer mansion keeps its secrets"
• New York Times, October 02, 1942, page 27, "Order ejects Collyers"
• New York Times, November 19, 1942, page 27, "Collyers pay off $6,700 mortgage as evictors smash way into home"
• New York Times, November 21, 1942, page 24, "Collyers get deed to home"
• New York Times, February 03, 1943, page 21, "Collyers may lose house"
• New York Times, February 04, 1943, page 24, "Government gets Collyer property"
• New York Times, July 27, 1946, page 16, "Subpoena flushes Harlem recluse"
• New York Times, January 28, 1947, page 25, "Hermit brothers get $7,500 award"
• New York Times, March 22, 1947, page 01, "Homer Collyer, Harlem recluse, found dead at 70"
• New York Times, March 26, 1947, page C24, "The Collyer mystery"
• New York Times, March 27, 1947, page 56, "Langley Collyer is dead"
• New York Times, April 12, 1947, page 15, "Langley Collyer buried"

External links

• The Collyer Brothers at Useless Information (http://earthdude1.tripod.com/collyer/collyer.html)
• Findagrave: Homer Collyer (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSsr=241&GSmid=46580804&GRid=8034842&pt=Homer%20Lusk%20Collyer&)
• Findagrave: Langley Collyer (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Collyer&GScid=64319&GRid=8034843&pt=Langley%20Collyer&)