D.C. will finally have two statues displayed in the U.S. Capitol when an effigy of Pierre L’Enfant is unveiled on Feb. 28, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton announced Monday. The House of Representatives accepted the statue as a gift from D.C. two years ago, and now it will be transferred from a D.C. government building to the Capitol’s Memorial Door Foyer.

Norton said in a press release that the unveiling continues the effort to secure statehood for D.C. residents — last year, the House passed a statehood bill for only the second time in history (the first was in July 2020). She added that the unveiling falls just a day after the anniversary of the 1801 passage of the Organic Act, which stripped D.C. residents of voting rights in Congress.

“We have made historic progress on D.C. statehood this Congress,” Norton said in a statement, “and the unveiling of D.C.’s second statue in the Capitol is the latest recognition by the House that D.C. deserves to be a state.”

The L’Enfant statue, commissioned more than a decade ago by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, was sculpted by Gordon Kray and is currently located in the lobby of a building at One Judiciary Square. A French-American architect and engineer, L’Enfant famously laid out the city’s original plan and served in the Revolutionary War.

For over 150 years, all 50 states have been allowed two statues in the Capitol’s collection, and the District’s leaders have long wanted to display two statues, as well. For years, Republicans blocked these efforts. However, in 2012, Congress passed a law accepting D.C.’s statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass — which was sculpted by Steven Weitzman and originally located alongside the L’Enfant statue at One Judiciary Square. The following year, Congress installed the bronze, seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Douglass in Emancipation Hall.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Del. Norton, Mayor Muriel Bowser, and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson will unveil the L’Enfant statue in a dedication ceremony on Feb. 28 at 10 a.m. in the Memorial Door Foyer on the first floor. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the event won’t be open to the public, but it will be livestreamed.