COLLYER CURIOSA:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOARDING
Scott Herring
It’s the stuff of legend and the legend of stuff. With a front-page head-
line heralding “Homer Collyer, Harlem Recluse, Found Dead at 70,” the
New York Times reported on 22 March 1947, that “the circumstances sur-
rounding the death of 70-year-old Homer, blind as the poet he was named
for, were as mysterious as the life the two eccentric brothers lived on the
unfashionable upper reaches of Fifth Avenue, in the middle of Harlem.”1
Tipped by an anonymous phone caller the day before, police found Col-
lyer’s emaciated corpse in his Harlem brownstone located on the corner of
Fifth Avenue and 128th Street. Days later, officers discovered the rotting
body of his brother, Langley, lying several feet from where Homer had
died. Buried beneath mountains of material, Langley had been cru