George Greene, director of the University Mailing Service, sits in the Gateman's Lodge by the Widener Gate and acts as middleman between the Post Office and the University. He also handles all mail circulating around the various departments and administrative divisions.

Early each morning, the Service's lone truck picks up all mail for Harvard, except student mail and letters with no more explicit address than "Harvard"; these are sent to Weld Hall for further interpretation. The mail is already sorted by buildings at the Post Office, and Greene's office integrates the mailbags into seven piles, for delivery to seven sub-stations located around the outskirts of the Harvard territory.

These sub-stations consists of large boxes, from which the mail is picked out by janitors for delivery to individual offices. This early delivery is the only one not directly handled by the Post Office; the Brattle Street branch was too overloaded by the volume of morning mail for the University to get it out at a reasonable hour.

For most of the day, Greene is concerned with keeping interdepartmental mail flowing among the sub-stations, and fending off intruders who have severe misconceptions about the function of his service. At the beginning of each school year, curious freshmen keep popping in to find out why their monthly checks go astray and why they keep getting letters addressed to people in Eliot House. All Greene can do is refer them to the Information Office in Weld Hall, and offer to sell them some stamps. He does about $50 worth of stamp business each week, mostly in the three-cent variety.

The Mailing Service moved into its present pill-box from Grays Hall in 1947. Prior to that, the Lodge had housed the gateman and sundry other University officials. Greene was surprised when a venerable gentleman approached his booth and requested two tickets to the Yale game. It seems that the Gateman's Lodge once housed the entire HAA--a little over thirty years ago.