Homer Collyer, 1939.

Langley Collyer, 1946.

One person can lose his mind, but nothing is madder than a couple. 

Two people can encourage each other to health and prosperity, but they can also nurture mutual insanity, creating a madhouse behind close doors, replacing bedroom mirrors with the funhouse kind. No living quarters in New York City history were likely crazier than the Fifth Avenue hoarder heaven that the reclusive brothers Homer and Langley Collyer called home sweet home. It contained, among many–many–other things, 240,000 pounds of garbage, 18,000 books, 17 grand pianos, eight live cats, three dressmaking dummies and two very damaged brothers. 

The following is a March 22, 1947 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about the demise of the Collyers, published after the police had found Homer’s lifeless body seated in a chair but 18 days before they realized that Langley was just ten feet away, dead and buried under some of his favorite things:

“The junk-filled mansion of the mysterious Collyer brothers in Harlem today was boarded up following the discovery of the body of Homer Collyer but his brother Langley was nowhere to be found.

Homer’s body was found yesterday by police on the second-story brownstone house at 2078 5th Ave. The blind and paralyzed septuagenarian was found in a sitting-up position after a neighbor phoned police.

How anyone ever got in or out of the mansion, reported to be the repository of a fortune in cash, was a mystery to police. They found their way barred at every opening by piles of newspapers, tin cans and other assorted junk.

Walls of Junk

Patrolman William Parker of the 122nd St. station finally got in through a second-story window after a ladder was thrown up. He had to clear away a solid wall of newspapers, however, before worming his way into the house.

The body of the dead recluse was taken out in a khaki bag to the morgue where an autopsy will probably be made today. John R. McMullen, the Collyers’ attorney, said burial will take place in Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. He was confident Langley would get in touch with him.

William Rodriquo of 1 W. 127th St., Manhattan, a Democratic co-captain in the 9th A.D. and friend of the Collyers, insisted that Langley was in a little room on the third floor of the house. But Inspector Joseph Goldstein, who ordered the place boarded up, said if Langley were around he would have come out.”