Creative History

  On March 21, 1947 an anonymous tipster, giving the simple alias of Charles Smith, called the 122nd precinct of the New York City Police Department. The tipster insists that there is a dead body locked inside and decomposing in a four story brownstone located at 2078 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 128th Street.  He says that there is a terrible smell emanating from the building.  Other than mentioning the odor the caller refuses to provide any further information and promptly hangs up. Despite the gravely serious assertions made by the anonymous tipster the police, at first, are not overly concerned about the matter.  They know that the brownstone mansion located at 2078 Fifth Avenue is the home of the reclusive and eccentric Collyer brothers.  It is routine for neighbors to call and complain about repulsive odors or strange sounds coming from the four story home in the middle of the night and it is just as common for teenage pranksters to call 911 asserti...

“South Street is burned down...exchange place is bured down...Wall Street is burned down.” -from the New York Courier and Enquirer December 17, 1835           The temperature has dropped to a frigid negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  It is the middle of the night December 16, 1835.  Gale force winds begin whipping through the meadowlands of New Jersey. The Hackensack and Passaic Rivers are frozen solid.  Only a few hours ago a bright full moon had illuminated the meandering waterways of ice and made them glow like reflective glass serpents as they wound their way through the marshlands. Now, those same frozen rivers are glowing eerily pink in the night like something from a martian landscape, and the moonlight is obscured by dark and ominous clouds of smoke. In New Jersey the sky is glowing red.  All of lower Manhattan has become one solid wall of flame.  The foreboding glowing red sky can be seen as far away as Philidelphia ...