Metsker Maps

Metsker Maps puts physical geography back into the shopping experience at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Maps and atlases share the selection with globes, making it possible to compare a place at several scales rather than viewing it only through a phone screen. The shop serves travellers and collectors as well as people choosing a wall map for home. Its history began with a different audience: Charles F Metsker founded the business in Tacoma in 1901, producing maps for industries such as surveying and logging.

The company's own history describes its later development in Seattle, followed by a move to Pioneer Square and eventually Pike Place Market in 2004. The current shop is in the Sanitary Market Building. Those changes matter because the long business history should not be mistaken for more than a century at the present address. Today the range extends beyond the Pacific Northwest, while the business retains ties to local cartography through Kroll Map Company. For a purchase, start with what the map needs to do: help plan a journey, show a region in detail or serve as an object to study on the wall.