History Guy: Hallmark spent 70 years making products in Topeka
It was in 1944 that Kansas City, Mo.-based Hallmark Cards Inc. adopted the slogan it still has today: “When you care enough to send the very best.”
One year earlier, in 1943, Hallmark had opened a greeting card manufacturing facility at 912 S. Kansas Ave. in Topeka.
This week’s History Guy video at CJOnline.com focuses on the 70 years Hallmark spent making products in this community.
The company in about 1946 moved its Topeka manufacturing operations to a building at 1035 S. Kansas Ave., according to Topeka Capital-Journal archives.
In 1966, Hallmark moved its Topeka workforce into a newly constructed plant at 240 S.E. Madison.
That massive facility subsequently underwent two expansions and came to employ several hundred people.
One photo in this week’s History Guy video shows company president Donald J. Hall giving a report to Topeka plant employees in 1968, on the occasion of Hallmark’s 25th anniversary in Topeka.
Hall, 92, is now Hallmark’s executive chairman and majority shareholder
Another photo in the video, taken in 1975 by Capital-Journal intern Susan Ford — the daughter of then-President Gerald Ford — shows employees at the Topeka plant shuffling through greeting cards while looking for inferior prints.
Hallmark closed its Topeka plan in 2013 as part of a consolidation that involved moving the work done there to its facility in Lawrence.
The former Hallmark plant, which encompasses 622,530 square feet, is now owned by Southwest Resources Real Estate Group LLC, according to Shawnee County Appraiser’s Office records.
