Truth be told, I’ve never paid much attention to the historic street lamps along Van Ness Avenue. Maybe they’ve escaped your notice as well.

But they’re the subject of San Francisco’s latest debate over how to preserve remnants of the past, a discussion that grows more subjective each year — and more entwined with local politics.

In this case, the objects of affection are the ornate light fixtures from 1936 that are attached to concrete poles from 1916. Many of the poles are corroded wrecks, including the Beaux Arts touches at bottom and top. The brackets and fixtures retain a certain savoir-faire beneath coats of weary paint.

Until last month, it also looked like they were living on borrowed time. Van Ness is getting ready to be made over and will include the city’s first true bus-only lanes, with Muni on a protected path that will replace the current median. The fixtures and the lamp poles — which do double duty holding the overhead lines that power the buses — would be replaced by modern streetlights for nearly the entire route.

The concept of a bus-friendly Van Ness dates to 2001. Engineering studies and historic reviews were completed in 2009. The Board of Supervisors and the Federal Transportation Administration signed off on the basics in 2013.

But now there’s a Board of Supervisors resolution calling on the 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.” It passed unanimously, no easy feat these days at City Hall.

“We don’t want to be considered obstructionist. We are not against bus rapid transit,” said Lynne Newhouse Segal, president of the Pacific Heights Residents Association and one of the organizers of the Coalition to Save the Historic Streetlamps of Van Ness Avenue.

Segal learned of the lighting changes in May while on a walking tour. She accepts that the poles “are hopeless,” given their condition. But the cast-iron brackets?

“They’re relics of a gracious age,” Segal said. “I love to see the city’s evolution right in front of my eyes.”

That’s also the view of Darcy Brown, who learned of the streamlined illumination from Segal. Brown is executive director of San Francisco Beautiful, a group founded in 1947 to keep the city’s cable cars from being replaced by buses.

They and other activists then approached Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who entered the political fray in the 1990s as a defender of the Colombo Building, a 1913 flatiron on Columbus Avenue across from the Transamerica Pyramid (talk about evolution).

Close readers of this very newspaper know Peskin’s talent for attention-getting legislation. But at the first meeting after his return to the board last December after a two-term absence, Peskin voted against a Van Ness-related contract with Caltrans, saying he was concerned about the threats to the historic lighting.

“It was important for the board to take a position,” Peskin said this week. “We’re not trying to slow down or stop bus rapid transit, but they should find a way to adaptively reuse the brackets and fixtures.”

If the 80-year-old hardware can be installed or replicated on new poles, without pushing the cost of a $316 million project even higher, great. They do have an Old World charm.

But the treasures at stake aren’t the cable cars — or even the Colombo Building. They’re easy to miss amid the clutter of Van Ness, the wires and signage and buildings that range from City Hall to hotel slabs.

The fact is, the lamps blur into the clutter because they’re designed for automobiles. The fixtures date to when Van Ness was widened in 1936 to ease Highway 101’s passage through the city. The lighting extends from fairly plain lampposts over the street, not the sidewalk, and the bulbs are about 25 feet high.

So if you’re walking, they escape notice. Why look up? Van Ness is a passageway, not a promenade.

Compare this with Market Street’s Path of Gold, 327 light posts that received landmark status in 1991. The bases are adorned with elaborate mouldings. The light fixtures fan out above the sidewalks. The poles also wear eye-catching coats of black; the Van Ness poles were murky gray from the start.

Muni now says it will present several options to the supervisors within weeks, followed by a feasibility report. The first stage of the remake of Van Ness begins this fall, but new lighting isn’t scheduled for installation until 2018.

Meanwhile, last week I received a letter from fans of the 49-Mile Scenic Drive signs that were designed by Rex May in 1955. They’re now being replaced with versions that feature thinner letters and a more streamlined gull.

“The revised version is ill-conceived and awkward,” they write. Their hope is to have the original signs declared official city landmarks.

Honestly, I kind of like the new take on that amiable gull. But if the fans of Gull 1.0 talk to the right people, particularly during election season, San Francisco’s list of 269 official landmarks might be expanded yet again.

Place is a weekly column by John King, The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron