A fight that's supposedly about the character of Van Ness Avenue, which some might call a contradiction in terms, is heating up further as Supervisor Aaron Peskin announces a "Coalition of Save the Historic Streetlamps of Van Ness Avenue," which a press release heralds as a group made up of "civic leaders, neighborhood associations and preservationists including San Francisco Beautiful, San Francisco Heritage, and the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco."

We learned last month that Peskin had decried plans for the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project as it approached its much-delayed groundbreaking this fall because of a purportedly unforeseen threat to the historic street lamps, many of them reportedly crumbling. Peskin found unanimous support among the Board of Supervisors for his "Resolution urging the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to make all efforts to preserve the historic character of the Van Ness Corridor through reuse as well as replication of the Van Ness Avenue historic streetlamps," and has now announced the Coalition, whom you can likely catch in action at an SFMTA open house tomorrow held at 6 p.m. in the Tenderloin Elementary School Auditorium.

For the BRT project, which was most recently targeting a 2019 completion date, the SFMTA had been granted a conditional “certificate of appropriateness” that asked them to simply save four of the historic poles in question, with an understanding that they're in bad shape and will need to be recreated to a degree. According to the project's website, other poles would be replaced, as the project calls for "updating street lighting with brighter, more efficient street lights that include new sidewalk lighting."

According to the literature from the Coalition:



The over 200 historic trolley poles and streetlamps that run the length of Van Ness Avenue were originally constructed in preparation for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition and moved in 1936 for a road-widening project to inaugurate the Golden Gate Bridge. The graceful ironwork brackets and lamps are known as the “Ribbon of Light,” serving as the only consistent hallmark that defines the two miles of Highway 101 from Market Street to North Point Street.



The group has lots of quotes from supporters including Willie Brown, who says he "cannot imagine Van Ness Avenue without its historic street lamps,” And, addressing what we were all thinking, President of the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco (see his lovely Victorian preservationist house here) says that “The Coalition is not in any way a group of obstructionists trying to delay the Van Ness BRT. Rather, many of us attended early outreach sessions, and expressed our strong support." No, he says, the problem is that "As late as 2014, the renderings being presented continued to show the historic street lamps, so we had no reason to suspect a radical change would occur to remove them without proper notification, engagement, and outreach. This did not happen, which is why we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to devote so much of our time and effort to express our passionate viewpoint that these historic assets must be saved.”

Previously: Van Ness BRT Threatened By Preservationists Who Want To Keep Historic Streetlamps, Poles