The Collyer Brothers — Down the Rabbit Hole

[Music] New York retains a cultural memory for the name Collier though most have forgotten from where the name originates its fire department uses the term Colliers mansion syndrome in reference to residences besieged by clutter and a pocket park bears their name in Harlem attached to the end of a row of brownstone apartments parents will still sometimes admonished their children by comparing their rooms to the coal years's despite the fact that crowds of thousands would once congregate outside of their home their name was almost lost to obscurity however archives of newspapers and magazine articles chronicling their strange and alien lifestyle have been preserved on the Internet and in recent years they have squirmed their way back into public consciousness but who exactly were these brothers and how did they manage to capture the interest of a whole generation of New Yorkers the Collier brothers were born to a pair of first cousins in the 1880s their father Hermann Collier was a wealthy and eccentric gynecologist while their mother Susie Frost was an opera singer little is recorded about the two of them and falsehoods seemed to shroud them for example Herrmann is quoted as saying our family is one of the oldest in New York the first Collier came from England on the Speedwell which was really better than the Mayflower these claims are dubious however for two reasons first the Colliers were descended from the Livingston's who arrived fifty-two years after the first colonists second the Speedwell never made it to the east coast of America because the ship was found to be taking on water those that were planned to make the trip aboard the Speedwell simply loaded onto the Mayflower instead Herrmann worked at Bellevue Hospital before its infamous psychiatric ward was founded where he is said to have paddled a canoe there and back each day Suzi on the other hand sang at the 14th Street Academy of Music and was generally lauded for her gorgeous voice after the two met they moved into what's known as a Coldwater flat so-called because of the lack of hot running water while they were there they gave birth to three children though the first died when she was only four months old due to unrecorded causes in 1881 however Homer Collier was born and four years later in 1885 his brother Langley followed Homer was a prodigy entering College in New York at the age of 14 and receiving his bachelor's degree when he was 20 he went on to receive his graduate degree from Columbia University studying Admiralty law in which he pursued a successful career his co-workers described him as quote courteous cultured and shy one of Herman's patients who had met Homer described him as quote bright too bright Langley's educational background on the other hand is a bit more dubious though he claims to have received his degree from Columbia University and engineering the college claims that there are no records stating he ever attended he pursued a career as a concert pianist styling himself with long hair and eventually playing at Carnegie Hall after some time however he eschewed his piano playing four pianos selling in 1909 the Collier family moved into a brownstone apartment in Harlem at this point in time Harlem was quickly becoming home to the wealthier white families of New York and the family lived there quietly for some time attending church and going about their business in 1919 however Herman moved into a new home leaving the rest of the family behind in the brownstone according to Herman's nephew Suzie stayed in the brownstone with the two brothers though Herman still saw his family daily four years later in 1923 hermann died leaving everything he owned to his children which was a sizable amount one of his patients bought his house and found the basement full of what she labeled as junk including an entire Ford Model T the brothers rather than selling or discarding it moved the vast array of objects into the Harlem brownstone including the Model T which they disassembled to fit inside their mother past six years later and she left all of her possessions to the brothers as well all of which was moved into the brownstone for some time the brothers lived outwardly normal lives continuing in their professions and even teaching Sunday school at their local church while they lived together in their parents's apartment but this normalcy would not last [Music] [Laughter] 1929 marked not only the death of Suzy Frost but also the beginning of the Great Depression though the Collier brothers were still well-off thanks to their inheritance and their successful careers Harlem saw a radical change in its demographics many of the wealthy whites who had once characterized the area moved out as their funds disappeared with the economic downturn supplanted by a large influx of poor blacks crime dramatically increased and the Colliers began to grow fearful of the changes to their neighborhood they left their house less and less in favor of one another's company and the safety of their opulent four-story brownstone for some reason they stopped paying their bills cutting them off from water gas and electricity in lieu of these public services they would fill containers with water from a pump four blocks away for heat they would burn lamp oil Langley was convinced that he could retrofit the engine of his father's old Model T to produce electricity but it's uncertain as to whether or not these attempts were successful despite the depression the brothers as finances seemed to be in no danger after Homer left his insurance job he purchased a piece of property across the street from the brownstone in 1932 allegedly he produced the entire $7,500 from his pocket in cash adjusted for inflation this amount is just over one hundred and thirty thousand dollars just one year after this transaction however Homer suddenly suffered hemorrhages in the backs of his eyes from a stroke leaving him blind soon after he would also find himself paralyzed [Music] cushioned by the money the family had saved and inherited Langley quit his job to take care of his older brother full-time caring for all of his needs after this the brothers almost never left their brownstone cutting themselves off from the outside world almost entirely the apartment continued to degrade around them as they languished inside surrounded by piles of junk in the darkness rumors began to spread fueled by tabloids and newspapers that there were vast riches hidden away somewhere in their apartment this combined with their strange antisocial behavior made them the target of both ire and fascination within the Harlem community though the brothers mostly experienced the former themselves children took to calling them spooks and throwing rocks through their windows in response Langley barred the first storey windows and bolted the front door shut he stopped leaving the house except extremely late at night wearing a tattered coat held together with pins in order to fetch the things the two needed sometimes he would walk over six hours in order to retrieve bread from a town far away though the reason for this is uncertain he also grew intensely protective of his brother disallowing anyone from seeing him this secrecy only enticed further fascination which eventually led Helen worden a reporter for the New York world telegram to interview him where she was able to tease out a few bits of information from the reclusive man he is quoted as saying we've no telephone and we've stopped opening our mail you can't imagine how free we feel the years wore on and the years became a decade and still there was silence from the brownstone an account by Helen worden grimly described the decaying building its storm doors were shut and a portion of the front steps missing a gaping hole marked the location of what had once been a doorbell through splintered glass windows I could see old-fashioned wooden shutters drawn tight and evidently latched from the inside newspapers littered the area way over the roof arched an enormous elm like a hangman's tree though apparently deserted the house borer neither a for rent nor a for sale sign the affairs of the Collier brothers began to erode as well in 1939 workers were sent to the brownstone to retrieve the gas meters that had been left unused for 11 years with all entrances blocked off from the first story the workers were forced to climb to the second storey and shimmy their way along the wall allegedly thousands of people gathered to watch the spectacle entranced by the possibility of learning about the forbidden interior of the Colley aires' apartment three years later in 1942 a reporter was able to catch up with Langley and interviewed him spinning his speech as a story of brotherly love the Colliers had recently become newsworthy again as the bank had threatened to foreclose on their apartment recently due to missed mortgage payments a sizable section of the article was given over to Langley's own words and details of his brothers condition were revealed he claimed that his brother had been paralyzed by inflammatory rheumatism but it seems that this was never confirmed by a physician Homer and I decided we would not call in any doctors he explained you see we know too much about medicine doctors would remove homers optic nerve and he would be blind forever and they would treat his rheumatism with drugs that would shorten Homer's life no we decided to do it our own way by diet and rest Homer eats 100 oranges a week and is improving he can sit up a little now we believe in letting nature take its course I cook his meals and have to cut up his meat into little cubes so he can eat it with a spoon I have to bathe him and tend to all his wants I used to read to him we have all the classics in our library I used to read Shakespeare and Dickens but my eyes went bad and I stopped so now we just talk and listen to the radio when Homer first lost his sight he used to see visions of beautiful buildings always in red he would describe them to me and I would try to paint them just as he directed someday when Homer regains his sight I will show the paintings to him he also revealed that there were thousands of newspapers within the brownstone quote I am saving newspapers Homer so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news he close by adding tell the bank I'll make some payment and let me know what they say [Music] but apparently no payment was ever sent and the Bowery Savings Bank sent a crew to the apartment to have the interior gutted and cleaned when they arrived and began pulling things from the yard Langley shouted from one of the higher windows at the crews ordering them to drop his property but the crew was undeterred when they were done with the yard the police slammed the front door down and what they found was beyond the imaginations of any of the onlookers refuse had been piled in front of the door boxes laden with unknown likely useless objects and mounds of collected garbage almost as tall as the men themselves reached all the way to the back wall the police climbed over the heaps and made their way to Langley who sat defiantly within a small clearing like a nest when they confronted him he wordlessly wrote a check for six thousand seven hundred dollars equivalent to nearly 100 thousand dollars today and barked at them again to leave after this incident Langley would not speak to any more reporters even after the property Homer had bought across the street was repossessed for failure to pay taxes anonymous reports to the police would occur frequently after this incident occasionally to report that one of the Collier brothers had died on one of these instances Langley allowed the officer into his apartment perhaps out of frustration this was the first time that anyone was allowed to lay witness to the true extent of the Colliers as hoarding the amount of junk collected was difficult to comprehend there was so much that Langley had created maze like passageways and tunnels through the entirety of the brownstone even along the stairs traps had been laid for would-be intruders some designed to alert the brothers some designed to crush and kill underneath heaps of waste rats and cats ran rampant through the maze as well after 30 minutes of guidance through the apartment the officer gazed upon Homer Collier the first person to do so in years besides Langley Franz Lidz in his book ghostly men describes the encounter he was on a cot a burlap bag beneath and an old overcoat on the foot of the cot I am Homer L Collier the lawyer the old man said in a deep voice I want your name and shield number I am not dead why are you sitting with your knees up to your chin the sergeant asked my legs are doubled by rheumatism I can never lie down again [Music] on march 21st 1947 another caller informed police that someone had died within the brothers his apartment and that a miasma was beginning to seep from the building these calls had become common and when the police received these calls the routine was to knock upon the door and Langley would answer to assuage the concern when the police arrived this time however there was no answer they subsequently began searching for another method inside but with every entrance blocked or barricaded in some way they were forced to start pulling away junk the front door proved fruitless removing the utterly massive amount of refuse would take far too long as the first floor had been completely filled by Langley since the last time the police broke in on the second storey however police were able to pull away enough of the barricade to get inside after breaking one of the windows they spent two hours navigating the hordes of junk and avoiding the numerous traps laid by Langley but eventually they came upon Homer Collier sitting in a chair his legs as before were tucked to his chest but this time his head was resting on his knees he wore nothing but a blue and white bathrobe over his emaciated body he was dead the official cause of death was attributed to a combination of starvation and heart trouble according to an autopsy he had had nothing to eat or drink for more than three days and had been dead for ten hours immediately after homers discovery the police began searching for Langley at first they suspected that Langley was the one who put in the tip and they posted a policeman outside the front door to wait for his return they also put out a request for information on his location and reports of sightings flooded in though the search took them over nine states Langley could not be found the police expected that he would return within three days but when he never showed up they accepted the likely possibility that Langley had died within the brownstone and that his body was still somewhere amidst the heaps of garbage and so the police began pursuing both possibilities for nearly three weeks workers tore through the massive hoard while onlookers filled the streets to watch as objects were thrown to the sidewalk below and a crane was employed to lift some of the things from the upper floors the curious array of objects included both the mundane and the disturbing the brothers had amassed a sizable art collection including sculptures and paintings and their library numbered more than 25,000 books around 15,000 of which were Herman's old medical reference books 14 dishevelled pianos stood proudly on the first floor 10 of which were grand pianos and all of which were left over from Langley's abandoned piano selling business the remains of the old model T were still present as well more strangely there was a full human skeleton along with the body of a two-headed infant and various human organs all preserved and floating in jars it's likely that they had once belonged to their father Hermann Furniture guns bicycles baby carriages bowling balls a sawhorse and a massive list of other objects were pulled as well things that had at one point caught the eye of the younger Collier the final total was estimated to be around 120 tons those items that could still be sold were auctioned off totaling less than $2,000 or a little over 21,000 when adjusted for inflation you amidst the rubbish the workers inevitably found Langly decaying and gnawed by rats only ten feet from where Homer had been found he was buried beneath garbage in a tunnel after an autopsy it became clear what had happened while Langley had been bringing his paralyzed brother food he had accidentally triggered one of his own traps dropping heavy refuse onto him which pinned him to the ground and constricted his breathing Homer unable to move could only wait motionless as his brother suffocated with nobody to care for him and no way to call for help he slowly starved in the cold brownstone while his brother's body began to rot the apartment itself was in such a state of disrepair that it had to be demolished off of the building while their estate was split amongst dozens of distant relatives after the area was cleared a non-profit purchased the land and turned it into a pocket park where ironically people could come and sit at their leisure this left only old newspaper articles as evidence of their existence to preserve their memory reporters would write books about them often with equal amounts of disgust and fascination but rarely with pity today a search engine query for Collier will return dozens of editorialized articles with contradictory details about the chilling and horrific story of delusional psychotic hoarders before these articles were published however the brothers were strangely romanticized and now even an historical fiction novel bears their names though heavy liberties have been taken with the source material some see them as martyrs standing defiantly against a culture that demanded they engage with it they are a real-life Bartleby at once champions of nonconformity and victims to their own natures made into public spectacles for their decision not to integrate simply saying I'd prefer not to wear some saw suffocation Langly and Homer saw freedom [Music] Oh [Music] hey guys thanks for watching if you enjoy this series and you want to help support me there are two things you can do the first is subscribing to this channel the second is checking out my book I am the author of a collection of weird fiction tales called the descended eye if you like the SCP foundation and that kind of horror you might enjoy it I'll leave a link in the description it is $4 for an e-book and $11 for a paperback but the paperback comes with the free copy of the ebook there will soon be a third way to support the channel through patreon once I at 1,000 YouTube subscribers I'll set that up and I'll make a video as soon as that goes live you can also follow me on Twitter where I post updates on down the rabbit hole and where I am the process of making those as well as any other videos I'll be making in the future if you missed the last down the rabbit hole you can click on that video over there it's on the SCP foundation and one of the few times the 4chan has actually done something constructive that's all I've got so thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed and I'll see you on the next video you

Channel: Fredrik Knudsen

Views: 1,212,383

Rating: 4.9344811 out of 5

Keywords: Collyer, brothers, hoarding, Harlem, New York, Editorial, Editorials, Rumors, Homer, Langley, Herman, Susie, Opera, Hoard, Interview, Ford Model T, Down the Rabbit Hole, Historical, blind, blindness, lawyer, Ghostly Men, admiralty law, piano, traps, Helen Worden, Franz Lidz, documentary, dtrh

Id: 81jV9D8FiFA

Length: 20min 48sec (1248 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/diamondheaded]

its not an apartment its a huge 4 story house for fucks sake

[u/brahmalam]

This was interesting to watch. I like Down the Rabbit Hole topics/stories picked.