25 Facts About Collyer brothers

Since the 1960s, the site of the former Collyer house has been a pocket park, named for the brothers.

The Collyer brothers were sons of Herman Livingston Collyer, a Manhattan gynecologist who worked at Bellevue Hospital, and his first cousin, Susie Gage Frost Collyer, a former opera singer.

At the time of Langley's birth, the couple were living in a tenement while Herman Collyer brothers interned at Bellevue.

In 1909, Herman Collyer brothers moved the family into a four-story brownstone in the Harlem neighborhood at 2078 Fifth Avenue.

Dr Collyer brothers was known to be eccentric and was said to frequently paddle down the East River in a canoe to the City Hospital on Blackwell's Island, where he occasionally worked, and then carry the canoe back to his home in Harlem after he came ashore on Manhattan Island.

Dr Collyer brothers moved to a new home at 153 West 77th Street while Susie stayed in the Harlem brownstone.

Dr Collyer brothers died in 1923, leaving his sons all of his possessions, including items from his medical practice, which they brought to their home in Harlem.

Susie Collyer died in 1929, leaving the brothers all her possessions and the Harlem brownstone.

The Collyer brothers were uncomfortable with the shift in racial demographics, as more African Americans moved into the once-empty apartment houses that were built near a projected subway route.

The Collyer brothers lived in "nests" created amongst the debris that was piled to the ceiling.

Collyer brothers tended to Homer's health and was determined to cure his brother's physical ailments through "diet and rest".

The Collyer brothers feared that if Homer sought medical attention, doctors would cut his optic nerve, leaving him permanently blind, and give him drugs that would hasten his death.

Collyer brothers would pick food out of the garbage and collect food that was going to be thrown out by grocers and butchers to bring back to his brother Homer.

Collyer brothers's appearance was disheveled; he sported a droopy mustache, wore a 1910 boating cap and his tattered clothes were held together by pins.

In 1932, shortly before Homer Collyer brothers went blind, he purchased the lot across the street from their house at 2077 Fifth Avenue, with the intent of developing it by putting up an apartment building, but after the onset of his blindness, any plans of profit from the real estate venture ended.

Since the Collyer brothers never paid any of their bills and stopped paying income taxes in 1931, the property was repossessed by the City of New York in 1943 to pay the $1,900 in back income taxes that the brothers owed.

The Times repeated information about the Collyer brothers' hoarding and repeated neighborhood rumors that the Collyer brothers lived in some sort of "Orientalist splendor" and were sitting on vast piles of cash, afraid to deposit it in a bank.

The Collyer brothers made the news again when, in 1939, workers from Consolidated Edison attempted to force their way into the house to remove two gas meters that had been shut off in 1928, and were met with hostility from the reclusive brothers.

The brothers drew media attention again in August 1942 when the Bowery Savings Bank threatened to evict the Collyers for failing to pay their mortgage for three years.

Collyer brothers then ordered everyone off the premises, and withdrew from outside scrutiny once more, emerging only at night when he wanted to file criminal complaints against intruders, get food, or collect items that piqued his interest.

Police initially suspected that Langley Collyer brothers was the man who phoned in the anonymous tip regarding his brother's death and theorized that he fled the house before police arrived.

Collyer brothers's decomposing body, which was the actual source of the smell reported by the anonymous tipster, had been partially eaten by rats and was covered by a suitcase, bundles of newspapers and three metal bread boxes.

The Collyer brothers were buried next to their parents in unmarked graves at Cypress Hills Cemetery, in the Brooklyn borough.

The Collyer brothers chair passed into the hands of private collectors upon being removed from public exhibit in 1956.

The salvageable items fetched about $2,000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000, of which $20,000 worth was personal property.