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time one box they recently sent me is the copper box it's called the copper box because it contains
these two copper cups but not just that what am i gonna do with these copper cups well i'll tell you
you're gonna make a moscow mule and you do that with obviously alcohol plus you add some of this
fiery ginger syrup and also ice where do i get ice from well from the freezer but then what you do
is you put it in this canvas bag that they provide you smash it up with this mallet so it gets all
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at the corner of 5th avenue 128th street in new york city's harlem neighborhood
lies collier brothers park one of the dozens of tiny vest pocket parks dotted throughout the
city it is an unassuming place a fenced-in plot belly 140 square meters with a handful of trees
some flower pots and a park bench yet despite its mundane appearance this tiny park marks the site
of one of the strangest episodes in the history of new york city from this spot once stood the
luxurious brownstone townhouse where for nearly two decades a pair of eccentric and reclusive
brothers shut themselves off from the world living a mysterious and shadowy life amid vast
mountains of accumulated junk this is the bizarre tale of the collier brothers history's ultimate
orders homer las collier was born on november 6 1881 while his brother langley wakeman collier
followed five years later on october 3rd 1886 born to hermann livingston coylier a wealthy
manhattan gynecologist and susie gage frost coylia the brothers were the sons of one of the oldest
families in new york city while the brothers were not as they often claimed descended from
passengers of the speedwell a ship which arrived in massachusetts one month after the mayflower
their actual pedigree was no less impressive with their earliest american ancestor robert
livingston arriving on the continent in 1672. the eccentricity that would later make the brothers
infamous seemingly ran in the family their father being well known for such quirks as paddling
a canoe down the east river to his work at city hospital on blackwell's island then carrying said
canoe home on his back every evening befitting their elite status in new york society both
brothers attended columbia university with homer studying admiralty law and langley mechanical
and electrical engineering and chemistry langley also became a professional concert
pianist even performing at carnegie hall in 1909 herman collier moved his family to a luxurious
four-story brownstone at 20785th avenue in the then exclusive and affluent neighborhood of harlem
the family stayed there until 1919 when herman and susie separated allegedly over hermann's plans
to convert the house into a sanitarium hermann moved into a new house at 153 west 77th street
while the brothers who never married chose to stay with their mother in harlem herman collier
died in 1923 with susie following in 1929 leaving the brothers with an estimated estate worth some
five hundred thousand dollars for the next four years the collier brothers lived seemingly normal
lives with homer practicing law at the city title insurance company and langley working as a private
piano dealer and teaching sunday school at trinity church eccentric yet soft spoken and affable the
brothers clung to fashion styles 20 years out of date with homer favoring victorian era high
collars and sideburns and langley long drooping bow ties and moustaches but in 1933 everything
changed in that year homocolia suffered a stroke leaving him blind in both eyes and forcing him
to give up his work langley immediately gave up his own professional pursuits with drawing
to the family home and devoting himself entirely to caring for his older brother for some 14 years
little was seen or heard of the collier brothers with langley coylie only emerging after midnight
to run errands dressed in a greasy boating cap and a long threadbare coat held together with pins
he would walk for miles through the night to buy bread or scavenge food and other trash from
dumpsters dragging anything that caught his eye back to the brownstone soon every floor
of the house was packed floor to ceiling with mountains of random junk from pianos to rusty
bed springs steamer trunks baby carriages books bolts of fabric human organs preserved in jars
complete automobile chassis and countless stacks of newspapers and magazines which langley claimed
to be saving for when homer eventually regained his site and despite their great wealth the coyles
refused to pay their utility bills or taxes leading to their telephone being disconnected
in 1937 and their electricity water and gas being shut off in 1938. this forced langley to heat the
home with kerosene heaters and fetch water from a pump at mount morris park four blocks away
meanwhile the coil's reclusive lifestyle attracted the attention of their neighbors
who began spreading rumors that the brothers were living in orientalist splendor surrounded by silk
rugs and tapestries leather-bound books priceless antiques and piles of money they refused to
deposit in the bank these rumors led to numerous attempted break-ins and acts of vandalism which
only served to stoke langley coyer's paranoia and cause him to withdraw further from society
when neighborhood children threw rocks at the windows langley wired them shut and
installed iron bars he also used his engineering skills to dig a complex network of tunnels through
the piles of junk packing the house and construct deadly booby traps to crush any would-be intruders
under tons of falling debris yet despite these elaborate precautions langley professed no malice
towards his neighbors explaining in a rare 1939 interview that i don't want to be bothered by
people all people are after is money all we want is for people to leave us alone a man's home is
his castle what we do inside it is our business and what langley coya did in his castle was weight
on his brother who in addition to being blind had by 1940 become paralyzed by rheumatoid arthritis
distrusting doctors whom he feared would cut home his optic nerve or give him drugs that would
shorten his life langley insisted on healing his brother via natural means including a special diet
consisting mainly of black bread peanut butter and vast quantities of oranges as langley explained to
reporters you must remember that we are the sons of a doctor we have a medical library of fifteen
thousand books in the house we decided we would not call in any doctors you see we knew too much
about medicine 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 utterly devoted
to his brother langley did everything he could to keep homer comfortable entertained and stimulated
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 langley spent the remainder of his time tinkering with various inventions
including a device for vacuuming the inside of pianos and an electrical generator made out of an
old model t ford which he briefly used to light the house however this proved too inconvenient
to operate and langley soon switch back to using kerosene lamps as time went by langley grew ever
more protective of his older brother refusing to let anyone not even firefighters summoned to
put out a small blaze see or speak to him after catching neighbors peeking through a window from
a neighboring home langley bought the property for 7 500 cash in order to keep them out he
also grew increasingly fearful of his neighbors owing to the former more affluent populace being
supplanted by those of lesser means and despite their clearly expressed wishes the outside world
stubbornly refused to leave the collier brothers alone in 1939 a crew from consolidated edison
tried to force their way into the house to remove two disconnected gas meters only to be
chased away by an era langley collier while in 1942 the bowery savings bank attempted to evict
the coilers for failure to pay their mortgage for three months sending a cleanup crew to empty the
building once again langley began angrily yelling at the workers prompting his neighbors to call
the police but when the police finally managed to break down the front door they were confronted by
an impenetrable wall of piled junk which they had no choice but to dismantle piece by piece
when they finally broke through they found langley collier standing in a clearing in the middle
of the debris without comment he handed them a check for 6 700 paying off the mortgage in full
the final in dignity came in 1943 when the city of new york repossessed a lot the coylie brothers had
purchased in 1932 with the intention of developing an apartment complex using it to pay 1 900 of back
taxes that the brothers owed to the city langley loudly protested the repossession claiming that
since the brothers had no income they should not pay income taxes however this defense ultimately
proved unsuccessful over the next five years things seemed to settle down and the coilers
once again disappeared from public view bangla coylier was last seen in public in july 1946 when
he appeared in court to testify against a young black man accused of breaking into the brownstone
then on march 21 1947 a man identifying himself only as charles smith called the 122nd police
precinct claiming he smelled decomposition coming from the coyler house william baker the patrolman
assigned to the call found it impossible to break into the house as the doorway was blocked by a
wall of junk an emergency team of seven officers was duly assembled and began pulling out the junk
piece by piece throwing it down to the street below after five grueling hours of digging the
officers finally broke into a small alcove lined with stacks of newspaper where they discovered the
body of homocoilia dressed in a tattered blue and white bathrobe he was frail and emaciated
with matted gray hair down to his shoulders the medical examiner later concluded that he'd been
dead approximately 10 hours having succumbed to either starvation or heart disease langley coiler
however was nowhere to be found police initially suspected that langley had called in the anonymous
tip and was still at large and the 122nd precinct was flooded with hundreds of tips from citizens
claiming to have seen them all around the city but when langley failed to attend homer's funeral on
april 1 the authorities began to fear the worst the mystery was at last solved 17 days later
when on april the 8th workmen clearing out the house stumbled upon the body of langley collier
only three meters from where his brother had been found his decomposing rat eat and corpse was
found crushed under a pile of suitcases and metal bread boxes having apparently fallen victim to one
of his own booby traps it was later determined that langley had died first around march the
9th leaving the paralyzed homer to slowly starve to death both brothers were buried next to their
parents at cyprusil cemetery in brooklyn meanwhile workmen removed more than 140 tons of accumulated
junk from the coil home much of which was declared worthless the few salvageable items fetch 2
thousand dollars at auction while some of the more unusual artifacts such as the chair in which homo
collier had died in were exhibited in various dime museums and sideshows for nearly a decade
the coiler's estate valued at 66 000 was claimed by no less than 56 people mostly
first and second cousins of these 23 were awarded equal shares by the new york county court in 1952.
as for the qualia's brownstone years of neglect had rendered it unsalvageable and on the 30th of
june 1947 supreme court justice j edward lombard jr ordered it demolished as a public menace for
more than a decade the empty lot lay fallow until the 1960s when as part of a revitalization project
it was developed into the park which still bears the name of its infamous former occupants
the strange tale of homer and langley coilia has passed into new york legend inspiring countless
works of fiction and becoming a byword for reclusiveness and obsessive hoarding but for
all its macabre and sensational details the saga of the collier brothers is at its heart a touching
story of brotherly love and devotion and of two men who simply wanted to be left alone and in our
modern world where personal privacy is becoming a fast drinking commodity there's something
strangely refreshing about that so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
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you