People are surprised when they walk into the Map Center, according to the store's owner Andrew Nosal, because they assume that "if it's not at the mall, it must not exist." But the unassuming specialty store, located at 671 North Main St., Providence, a half block from a McDonald's, offers countless maps that stores at the Providence Place Mall wouldn't even consider carrying.

At the Map Center, customers can choose from 31 types of world maps, including an "upside down" world map (where north and south are inverted) and a world map hat, part of what Nosal affectionately refers to as "map-crap." Providence Waste Management comes to the Map Center for city atlases for the garbage fleet, and teachers shop here to enrich their classrooms. Sometimes, much to the chagrin of the proprietor, a customer will come in seeking a map to match their couch. At the Map Center, you can even get a reference map of Armenian birds. As the owner puts it, the store is filled with "endless odds and ends." For the serious map dork, the store offers 21 colors of map tacks as well as the Map Measurer -- a tiny wheel that rolls along maps to measure distances.

Nosal has been interested in geography since he was a boy. He always had "that geekiness," and was "the kid in the backseat who knew what road we were on." In 1981, after working for three years with a map company in Manhattan, Nosal learned that the Map Center, then located on Weybosset Street, was for sale. He came to Providence to buy the small business, which was affordable only because it was struggling at the time. Before his purchase, the store was owned, according to Nosal, by a woman more interested in television than in maps and before that by "two little old ladies."

Today, in an age of one-stop mega-stores, the Map Center is still thriving. Even though stores like Staples or Borders will carry a few maps, "no one at a bookstore will know as much as I do [about maps]," says Nosal, 47, and no other store can offer the same selection. Indeed, shopper David Casalino was pleasantly surprised when a clerk at Borders recommended the Map Center. He needed to buy an atlas for his seventh grader that would fit into a three-ring binder, but couldn't find such a map anywhere. "Staples, Office Max, Borders . . . I had looked in about seven different places [before coming here]," Casalino says.

People shop at the Map Center for any number of reasons, and Nosal is ambivalent about people who come in looking for maps related to global conflicts. "I'd be happy not to have that business," he says. During the Gulf War, sales of world maps and Middle East maps surged (after the war, Nosal couldn't sell maps of Iraq for ten cents). A few weeks ago, a sign went up in the store window that reads, "You don't need a war to want to know where Iraq is."

Business is rough and unpredictable, but "people keep showing up [and] it has become an institution through word of mouth," the map maven says. There is no particular product or customer that he most relies on, which is part of what Nosal most enjoys about his business: every kind of person will eventually need a map.

Issue Date: December 27, 2002 - January 2, 2003