PARIS — Only about 45 households use the Tremont Street Post Office, which serves the P.O. Box customers in the Paris Hill neighborhood.

Those 45 are the only homes in town to have Paris’ original ZIP code, 04271. Anyone in Paris who has their mail delivered uses the South Paris ZIP code, according to post office representatives at a meeting last week.

The post office on Paris Hill is about 3 miles from the South Paris Post Office, making it an obvious choice for the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to close 3,700 post offices nationwide.

But to many of the 45 or so households with an 04271 ZIP code, the tiny Post Office is an important part of daily life. Without a general store or similar gathering spot, the Post Office is the center of social life for Paris Hill residents.

Paul Thornfeldt, who lives off Mink Farm Road, called it “a gathering place.”

“You get to see people who are neighbors on the hill,” Thornfeldt said Wednesday after picking up his mail. “If there’s someone who passes on or something, the word spreads pretty quick, so you can pay your sympathies.”

Thornfeldt and other residents are contacting the U.S. Postal Service and asking it not to shutter the branch.

William Burmeister, who lives on Paris Hill Road, said the Post Office helps give Paris Hill its identity. “It’s one of the subtle things,” he said. “I think that Paris Hill might lose its identity as sort of a separate, special place.”

Burmeister said he’s written his congressman and even the postmaster general. “A number of us have written letters to them urging a better solution than what the Post Office has come up with,” he said.

Last Thursday, in a meeting at the First Baptist Church, Postal Service representatives laid out three potential avenues if the Tremont Street office closes. Boxes could be moved to the South Paris office on Main Street or to a standalone outdoor kiosk, or people could get roadside mailboxes.

Burmeister said he’s not impressed with any of those options. Roadside mailboxes have traditionally been absent in the village, which has been there more than 200 years and was once the center of town life.

“We think that it would look pretty shabby, overall,” he said of mailboxes. He said an outdoor bank of mailboxes wouldn’t be attractive, either.

Resident Jacqueline Kim agreed. “It’s nice to have this quaint, charming Post Office.”

Thornfeldt said that in his 24 years of living in Paris, he’s kept the same box number. He likes the postmaster, Neal LaBrecque, and said he has no trouble shipping parcels to family in Canada, Norway and Sweden. “It seems like other post offices, they have to look at the book. They have to figure things out.”

Charles Lynch of Mt. Mica Road said he prefers the small Post Office to the busier South Paris location, where he often has to wait in line. “The parking spaces are so narrow. Your car gets banged up.” He said he’d rather get a roadside mailbox than wait in line down the hill.

Living on Paris Hill doesn’t require residents to take out post office boxes at the Tremont Street office. LaBrecque said he has customers from South Paris and neighboring towns who use it because it’s conveniently located for their jobs.

The USPS has marked 34 post offices for possible closure in Maine, although four were removed from the closure list in November.

According to a study by the Postal Service, walk-in revenue there has steadily declined in recent years, from $27,646 in 2008 to $22,147 in 2011. Officials estimate the Postal Service will see $737,297 in savings over 10 years if the office closes.

The Paris Hill Post Office has existed in its current location since 1980. Before that, it was in a house next door, where former Postmaster Lenise N. Dennison lived, LaBrecque said. After Dennison’s retirement in 1978, the Post Office moved to a temporary trailer across the street while the current post office was built.

Not everyone is up in arms about the possibility of a closure. Paris Hill resident Jim Kothe said he likes the Post Office, but understands the desire to close it. “I feel both ways about it,” he said. Kothe said the people who go there to chat would miss it most.

Burmeister is one of those people. “We’d be willing to pay more for the boxes,” he said, if it would help make the location more financially feasible. He suggested making the office unmanned, with a postal worker filling the mailboxes each morning for people who wanted to pick up their mail.

“I’m concerned about the Post Office doing something that indirectly sort of affects the character of Paris Hill as a historic place,” he said.

treaves@sunjournal.com

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