In total, police and workmen took 103 tons of garbage out of the house. Salvageable items fetched less than $2,000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000, of which $20,000 worth was in the form of personal property (jewelry, cash, securities and the like). Items removed from the house included rope, baby carriages, a doll carriage, rakes, umbrellas, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a checkerboard, a child's chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands of books about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, a beaded lampshade, the chassis of the old Model T Langley had been tinkering with, one British and six American flags, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, fourteen pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and, of course, countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer died, police also found 34 bank account passbooks with a total of $3,007.18.

And in addition to the bundles of paper, there was a great deal of garbage. The house itself, having never been maintained, was also decaying: the roof was leaking and some walls had already caved in, showering bricks and mortar on the rooms below. Eventually the house was deemed a fire hazard and razed.

A gathering of some of the stranger materials pulled from the Collyer Mansion were taken to be exhibited at Hubert's Dime Museum, where they were featured alongside Human Marvels and sideshow performers. The morbid center piece of this display was the chair in which Homer Collyer died. Upon being removed from public exhibit in 1956, the Collyer chair entered the private collector's market. As events progressed, the chair earned the reputation of being cursed due to the misfortunes of the series of collectors who had come into possession of it. Today the Collyer Death Chair is maintained in the holdings of a collector of oddities named Babette Bombshell, of Orlando, Florida.

I mentioned the Collyers at work recently but had to explain the reference. The packrat mentality may be eternal but the bros, once name-checked on The Honeymooners, are fading from public memory.
- alex 6-18-2008 1:44 am [add a comment]

i get a strong sense of the collyers through the work of new yorker artist george price.
- bill 6-18-2008 1:59 am [add a comment]

I never heard the reference before. Love the images of their home.
- L.M. 6-18-2008 5:27 am [add a comment]

On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the dead body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers had covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.

I get grossed out cleaning up under the kitchen sink. I can't imagine how revolting that scene must have been
- L.M. 6-18-2008 5:54 am [add a comment]

I think my NC tenant had a bit of the disposophobia.
- jimlouis 6-18-2008 1:46 pm [add a comment]

oh he disposed of it. ...out back! gidder done! and done.
- bill 6-18-2008 2:04 pm [add a comment]

what a weird sad story.


- b. 6-18-2008 6:06 pm [add a comment]

yeah. fiction pales in comparison.
- bill 6-18-2008 7:39 pm [add a comment]