Collyer Brothers - Recluses

Recluses

Neighborhood people tried to break into the house because of unfounded rumors of valuables, and teenagers developed the habit of throwing rocks at the windows. As the brothers' fears increased, so did their eccentricities. They boarded up the windows, and Langley set about using his engineering skills to set up booby traps. Due to their failure to pay the bills, their telephone service was disconnected in 1917; electricity, water, and gas were turned off in 1928. 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 to the south (presumably Mount Morris Park, renamed Marcus Garvey Park in 1973). Langley would also walk miles all over the city to get food, sometimes going as far as Williamsburg, Brooklyn to buy as little as a loaf of bread. He would also 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, who by this time was handicapped with rheumatism. He also dragged home countless pieces of abandoned junk that aroused his interest. In 1933, Homer lost his eyesight due to hemorrhages in the back of his eyes. Langley devised an intended remedy, a diet of one hundred oranges a week, along with black bread and peanut butter.

In 1932, shortly before Homer Collyer went blind, he purchased the property 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 fell through. Since the Collyer brothers never paid any of their bills, the property was repossessed by the City of New York in 1943 to pay back all the income taxes that the Collyers owed the City. Langley protested the repossession of their property, saying that since they had no income, they should not have to pay income taxes.