In Store: Worlds for Sale

After more than sixty years,
Metsker is still on the map.

Photography by André Mora for City Arts.

A lost soul wanders into the store. “Do you know where the first Starbucks is?” Yes, indeed, the folks at Metsker Maps do know where it is. Just around the corner, in fact. A couple comes in, saunters up to the counter and asks, “Do you know where Kurt Cobain died?” Yes, 171 Lake Washington Boulevard East. Another gaggle of tourists trundles in later. “Where is Bruce Lee buried?” Lake View Cemetery, Lot 276, Grave 3. Really, what better place to ask for directions than a map store? Further, what better place than a cartographic wonderland that has been around in various iterations since the early twentieth century? Google Earth and MapQuest have their place, sure, but Seattle’s Metsker Maps has its pin placed firmly on the spot for geographic marvels.

“I have always been fascinated with maps,” notes Skip Ross, who has spent more than half of his life employed at Metsker’s, “with their ability to transport us to far-off lands and because of the stories they tell.” Ross knows those stories only too well. After graduating from Humboldt State University in California with a degree in geography, he moved to Seattle, applied at Metsker Maps and got a job, working first in the store’s original Pioneer Square location, opened by Zelma Waldo in 1948, before helping pack up the maps for its 2004 move to Pike Place Market.

Judging by the current stock, there were a lot of maps to pack. There’s a Greenland travel map. A Harley Davidson Ride Atlas of North America. A rail map of Europe. A map of Bolivia. An explorer map of Antarctica. They have topographical maps. They have zip code maps. They have wall maps of Africa. They have eighteenth-century maps of Cuba. They supply Weyerhaeuser tree farm maps and waterproof nautical charts. They sell children’s illustrated maps of the solar system and a map of Portuguese wines. Their maps of Seattle alone will make any armchair geographer swoon.

That’s just the maps. Don’t forget the globes, the geographic games, toys, posters and flags, from Turkey to Taiwan. All that and customer service one can’t find at a big-box retailer. “We have weathered the storm of bad economic times more so than other stores,” says Ross, “because we have created a unique place for people to browse and purchase items that they can’t find anywhere else.” If people go looking elsewhere for those items, their compass will surely point back to Metsker’s. •

Metsker Maps 1511 1st Ave., 206.623.8747, metskers.com