Marr Office Equipment in Pawtucket is Everyone’s Type

Michael Marr restores and sells vintage typewriters at his business, Marr Office Equipment. Photography by Dana Laverty

There’s a little time capsule on Pawtucket’s Main Street, housed inside an unassuming brick building.

Walk in, and you’re greeted by cobalt blue carpeting, wood-paneled walls, day-glo orange desk chairs and a double-tiered display of vintage typewriters lining the far wall.

Photography by Dana Laverty

It’s in this space that Michael Marr has been fixing typewriters for as long as he can remember, following in the footsteps of his father, Raymond, and his father before him, Robert, who founded Marr Office Equipment in 1953.

For a piece of equipment that’s pretty much extinct — no American companies produce typewriters and Marr estimates IBM stopped crafting them in 1992, around the time personal computers exploded — a surprising amount of the shop’s revenue comes from refurbishing and selling vintage typewriters.

It varies, but he’ll typically see twenty-five machines come in on any given week. Revenue-wise, it’s not far from what he makes in copier and printer sales. And nine times out of ten he can repair them. The hardest part, he says, is when someone brings in an old Smith-Corona or Underwood that has sentimental value and he can’t fix it.   

“A lot of it is sentimental — it belonged to their grandparents or a great aunt or uncle and they want to refurbish it,” Marr says. “We enjoy that, because it just keeps it going and keeps it alive.” 

Photography by Dana Laverty

You’ll still find typewriters here and there; there’s usually at least one tucked away in an office for those odd jobs like typing out
addresses on envelopes. But writers are far and away the biggest typewriter aficionados, Marr says, often looking for vintage brands like Olympia, Smith-Corona, Royal and Underwood. 

“They’ll sit down and try five, six, seven typewriters before they find the right one, because each typewriter has a different feel and a different touch,” he says.  

But a novel use has popped up for the vintage machines, it seems. A groom was coming in soon to drop off an old Royal: He and his betrothed wanted wedding attendees to sign a guest list by typing their names on a piece of paper.

And just like that, what once was old is new again.