Missouri Churchill Museum to become National Historic Landmark after passage of Sen. Hawley’s bill 

The site of Winston Churchill’s famous “iron curtain” speech is set to become a national historic landmark after President Donald Trump signed a bill proposed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri.

America’s National Churchill Museum, located on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, speaks “to the principles that are at the heart of the American experiment and which we reaffirm in this 250th year and which continue to shine brightly in the State of Missouri,” Hawley said in a speech on the Senate floor in support of the legislation.

The measure directs the secretary of the Interior to designate the museum as a National Historic Landmark in recognition of “its outstanding historical significance,” according to a press release. The law also directs the National Park Service to complete a “Special Resource Study” examining “future potential designations for the site,” according to the release.

Churchill joined President Harry S. Truman at the college in March 1946, where he famously described the spread of communism in Europe as an “iron curtain.”

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” Churchill said.

Twenty years later, to commemorate the anniversary of Churchill’s visit, Westminster brought over a 17th-century church, St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, which had been destroyed during the London Blitz in World War II. The college completed the church’s reconstruction and restoration in 1969, naming it the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library to represent “resilience, renewal, and the enduring friendship between Britain and America.”

The museum also holds the largest continuous section of the Berlin Wall in North America, Breakthrough, a sculpture by Churchill’s granddaughter, Edwina Sandys, according to the museum’s website. It offers collections, exhibits and educational programs focused on courage, leadership and resolve.

“That church symbolizes, really, the cradle of our civilization; the values that underlie who we are as a people; the sanctity of the individual; the rights of individual conscience; the right to worship; the liberties that flow to us not from a government, not from a bureaucrat, but from almighty God,” Hawley said, according to the release.

(Iron Curtain Sculpture, National Churchill Museum)