“Love Charles”

While working on the National Aquarium project for the US Department of the Interior, Charles and Ray sought expertise all over the world. They sent this postcard when they traveled to Europe in 1966 to visit aquariums and consult with scientists. It was sent from Leningrad (today, St. Petersburg), the last stop on their itinerary. The postcard, printed by the USSR’s Ministry of Communication, shows the Hermitage—one of the world’s most celebrated art museums with over three million artworks including those by Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. The museum occupies six large buildings, the most important of which, the Winter Palace, is depicted here. The structure was completed in 1762 to serve, as the name implies, as the seasonal home for the tsars. In 1844, Tsar Nicholas the First issued a decree that no building in the city could exceed the height of the Winter Palace. Charles signed the postcard with a large heart and “Love Charles” spelled phonetically in Cyrillic characters—perhaps a sly nod to the popular Ian Fleming spy thriller From Russia with Love.