For most of us, the days of keeping a stash of folded-up maps in the car glovebox are behind us. So in a world of smartphones and GPS, why go to a store that specializes in maps? That’s the question that Andrew Middleton is trying to answer at the Map Center in Pawtucket.
He says that when some people come into the store, “They say, ‘how are you still in business? Like the apps are great.’ I say, ‘yeah, the apps are great. And they also don’t do the thing that these other maps are capable of doing.’ I don’t see Google Maps and Apple Maps as competitors. I see them as selling information. I do not sell information. I sell a good story.”
The Map Center is filled with maps that tell stories, but how it came to be owned by a millennial map-making consultant who was living in Oakland California is its own story. The Map Center has been in business since the 1950s. Andy Nosal had owned it since the late 80s, and after running the center for about 30 years, he announced that it was for sale.
“The market had really changed over the course of his long tenure.” he explained. “And I think, in the late 2010s, I think he was really, really struggling with trying to figure out what a map center was supposed to be about. It had been such a huge part of his life for so long. It’s the, it was the business that, you know, he bought a house and raised a family with, it was a, it was a livelihood, but it was also a way of life for him. And I think even though it was making less and less money over every subsequent year, it was still a really beautiful thing to be a part of, and he wanted to keep doing it.”
Nosal didn’t get any serious offers when he announced that the store was for sale in 2017. And by 2023, he wrote an article in the Providence Journal “that basically said, ‘I’m done with it. I want to retire. If you want it, send me an email and I’ll give it to you.’ “
At the time, Andrew was working as a geographic information systems consultant in Oakland making maps with computers. As he put in, “All of my cartography nerd friends on Twitter were passing this article around kind of fantasizing, Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if, you know, and talking about it sort of in the same way that a lot of people want to like buy some land and start a farm out in the countryside, like if it were an actually good idea, more people would do it, you know, there’s a reason that there isn’t like a small bookstore on every corner, it’s not because people don’t want to do it. It’s because the functional reality of doing that is not great.”
Andrew wrote to Andy Nosal and offered to take on the ownership of the Map Center. He visited in April of 2023 to check out the place. “Andy made sort of a handshake offer a week after that. And I said, yeah, totally. I’m going to, I’m going to move to Rhode Island. I’m going to do this thing. While secretly completely dissolving inside, I proceeded to have like a four month long midlife crisis about whether I wanted to move across the country to own a not profitable map store in, forgive me, I now know it’s a lovely place, but you know, on the other side of the, I’m going to move to Pawtu- to where?”
Andrew took over the store in the fall of 2023, and for the first few months, he didn’t change much.”I didn’t want to tear everything apart before I understood how it worked,” he said. “ So I went out of my way to do as little as possible with respect to modifying the business. I just wanted to understand it as it existed.”
Andrew continued working at a remote job, and little by little, he started changing and adding to the Map Center’s collection. “I’m trying to have the biggest, craziest, most eclectic contemporary cartography collection. I’m gonna have some old maps, but I really want it to be a celebration of modern creativity.”
Now his stock includes books like a J.R.R. Tolkien atlas, a collection of maps from video games, and a book called The Radical Atlas of Ferguson, U.S.A. that was made on the 10th anniversary of Michael Brown’s murder. “It is a cartographic biography of Ferguson, Missouri. And it’s about high school graduation rates, health insurance coverage, fast food, grocery stores, floodplains, superfund sites, air quality. All of these things lead to an understanding of a very complicated place. And I want that book for every city in America.”
There are cold war-era maps of various cities in the U.S. that were made by the Soviet Union, providing an interesting outside-in perspective. There’s a collection in the style of state maps distributed by gas stations in the 1950s, except it shows what New England might look like in a worst-case climate change scenario with 80 meters of sea level rise.
Andrew isn’t that interested in antique maps, but he is interested in the old maps that say something about the time in which they were made. He showed me a 1935 map of Providence, a reproduction he printed from the state archives. The map is prominently displayed on an easel. It has heavy red lines dividing the city by wards. Andrew pointed out what he finds to be most important. “There’s this large, all caps, black hand lettering that refers to some neighborhoods as poor, poor, poorest. So this map is a reminder of the power that cartography has. That cartography has been used to make decisions. Many of those decisions have had really serious negative consequences for people. Like, this map has weight, and even today, If you want to know where they put the highway through, if you can connect the dots through these poor neighborhoods, that’s more or less where the highway right of way went. So, this is a map that had real consequences for real people, our neighbors.”
The collection also includes maps by artists, like a world map that has more than a thousand individually drawn animals placed in their various environments, and a pen and ink drawing of downtown Providence from a birds-eye view.
“One piece that came in that I’m really excited about is called RISD Cry. And it’s a map made by a RISD student of all of the places on campus that she’s cried in and then invited her classmates to do the same.”
So what is the purpose of a Map Center in 2025? It’s for the stories that maps can tell. It’s for the books that peel back the layers of the world around us, and sometimes it’s for something beautiful to hang on your wall.
“ I think Rhode Island is filled with beautiful, falling apart things. And in Rhode Island’s long history. We’ve accumulated some really cool stuff and not all of it’s been taken care of that well. And I think we all kind of wish that there was some corner of it that we could protect and make better, and pass on to the next generation.”
As I was about to pack up my recording equipment, an older couple came into the store with their 6 year old grandson, Miles. They had read about the Map Center in the Valley Breeze. Andrew remarked that Miles was a great cartographic name.
“He’s fascinated with maps,” the grandfather said.
“Do you have a favorite map?” Andrew asked.
Miles was still a little shy after just arriving in the store. “USA” he responded.
“He can pick out all the states,” his grandfather added with pride.
“Look at you!” Andrew responded.
Miles’ grandparents told him that if he had a good week at school, he’d get to visit the map store. Andrew says this happens every once in a while where a parent or grandparent finds out about the Map Center and brings in their kid who’s obsessed with maps. He explained why he thinks some young people are especially drawn to maps, “ I think especially when you’re a kid and you can’t go anywhere on your own, you’re sort of like reliant on other people, a map is one of the few ways that you can sort of have a travel experience without requiring somebody else hold your hand the whole time.” The Map Center is “Open for Exploring” in Pawtucket, Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and at mapcenter.com.
