Since 1995, the giant face of Frederick Douglass has peered out at passers-by along the 1200 block of Massachusetts Avenue NW from the west side of the Swiss Inn. But Douglass is about to disappear from view: The J.G.B. Cos. are converting an adjacent parking lot into an apartment building, which will fully cover the mural. “It’s going to be built, like, 5 inches from the mural,” says Byron Peck, who designed the portrait and is seeking a new wall on which to redo it from scratch—preferably, he says, “a publicly owned site that is off the shopping list of developers.” Another Peck mural, depicting Duke Ellington at 12th and U streets NW, faces similar obstruction by a new District Department of Mental Health community-services center. But that one can be salvaged, Peck says, because it’s on removable concrete panels. —Chris Shott