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Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding. more...

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The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby-traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades. The case earned such attention that the term "Collyer mansion" is used by firefighters to describe homes packed with rubbish.

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 sister, Susan, who died as an infant in 1880. The family lived in a three-story townhouse at 2078 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 128th Street in Harlem, New York City, New York. The family was well educated and both sons attended Columbia University, which had just relocated to its present-day Morningside Heights campus, about a twenty-minute walk from the Collyer house. Homer obtained a degree in engineering, while Langley became an Admiralty lawyer, although he preferred being an inventor. Homer also played the piano and became a self-styled musician with long, flowing hair, which was a rarity in this era. Over the years, as both brothers' eccentricities intensified, Langley tinkered with various inventions, such as a device to vacuum the insides of pianos and a Model T Ford adapted to generate electricity.

Dr. Herman Collyer abandoned his family in 1909, and the two brothers, still in their twenties, continued living in the house with their mother. When Herman died in 1923, his wife inherited all of his furniture, medical equipment and books and moved them to the Harlem house. Their mother 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 was 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. Manhattan's African American community was displaced from its primary location in the late 19th century--the now nonexistent tenderloin and San Juan Hill--at the same time that real-estate overspeculation caused by over enthusiasm from the creation of the NYC subway left Harlem filled with vacant homes. Though African-Americans had lived in Harlem since its founding, the conjunction of these two events, along with increased migration from the southern United States led to a significant alteration in Harlem's racial makeup. During and after World War I, the black population of New York quickly increased; this in conjunction with white flight made central 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org