Walter J. Marshall, the former vice president of planning at Necco, is best known to some as “the king of hearts.”

Until he retired in 2000, Marshall picked slogans for Necco’s “conversation hearts,” the Valentine’s day confections emblazoned with amorous messages like “Be Mine” and “Far Out.”

Marshall retired from Necco in July of 2000, after 47 years in the candy industry—just as the company was gearing up to move to a new, larger facility in Revere.

Although he says he’s nostalgic for the factory’s past, he also sees Novartis’ purchase of the old Necco plant as “a rebirth.”

“Everything changes–people and businesses,” he says. “Everything has a cycle–a birth and a life and a death.”

Of the company’s decision to move, Marshall says, “It was time.”

The space had become too cramped for Necco.

A system of vintage machinery climbed vertically through six floors, designed for an age when assembly lines were powered by gravity.

And Necco needed to expand out, not up.

But Marshall calls the old factory “a beautiful building.”

“You’d need an atomic bomb to knock it down,” he says.

The factory’s 18-inch concrete floors—thick enough to support huge vats of melted sugar—made it an ideal bomb shelter for the city of Cambridge during World War II.

“We still had the old wicker wheelchairs on each floor, in case someone got hurt,” says Richard P. Gaffney, Necco’s current director of special projects. “There was a locker in the cafeteria where they kept helmets and stretchers for air raids.”

Its door handles were inscribed with the Necco insignia. The upstairs offices were made of oak.

The factory had a hundred such details.