High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 1947) and Langley Wakeman Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947), known as the Collyer brothers, were two American brothers who became famous because of their bizarre natures and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely seen men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to ensnare intruders.