The Letter Box

The letterbox is a small building on the grounds of Grey Towers that Cornelia Pinchot had built for Gifford when he was governor of Pennsylvania. He never really liked working in the building, and usually just let his staff work in there and used it for storage. Gifford Pinchot could be a real pack rat. When his papers were donated to the Library of Congress after his death they took up 1/4 mile of shelf space.

The letterbox contains a loft that was once used to store some of Pinchot's papers. We now use the letterbox to show movies, display historic items that we couldn't really justify putting anywhere else, and for storage. The loft of the letterbox was full of boxes containing brochures, books, and other random things, like old slates from the roof.


Below is a statue of Napoleon that Gifford's father tried to donate to the town of Milford, but they didn't want it. It's on loan to us from the Smithsonian.

My job for the past few days is to take everyhing out of the boxes that are in the loft of the letterbox and put it on the shelves or in the drawers that have been sitting up there, comleteley empty. Exciting right? Well, at least I'm making a historic building look a little neater.

Here it is as a work in progress.