One of the Philippe Starck street lamps on Howard Street (Credit: Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen)

Ten iron and aluminum columns with glass cyclopean eyes stand sentinel on Howard Street between Third and Fourth Streets, intersecting the Moscone Center in the South of Market district. At night, the lamps’ faces blaze with light as the necks swivel down, morphing into Parisian-style streetlights. 

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

In November 1996, Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. became infatuated with the lamps while on a tour of the JCDecaux factory in Plaisir, France. This multinational outdoor advertising and street furniture corporation has provided San Francisco with dozens of its bus shelters, automatic public toilets, kiosks, newsstands, trash receptacles and benches.

BRIGHT ROBOT

A timer controls a small engine on the top of each streetlamp. At night, the engine moves the top from a vertical position to a horizontal one, to resemble a 7. In the morning, the top part revolves back up.

HORSE TRADE

The lamps were priced at $22,000 each, but San Francisco received them at no cost because JCDecaux wanted to display its products at the June 1997 U.S. Conference of Mayors at the Moscone Center.

Views of the Philippe Starck streetlamps on Howard Street (Credit: Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen)

MITTERRAND'S MAN

The curvaceous, organic shape of the metallic lamps is characteristic of works by the objects’ creator, the French designer Philippe Starck. His projects include windmills, toilet brushes, hard-drives and François Mitterrand’s living quarters in the Élysée Palace. The Clift Hotel near Union Square was glamorously refurbished by Starck in 2001.

SECOND OPINION

Mayor Brown cajoled his good friend Stanlee R. Gatti, then president of the San Francisco Arts Commission, into flying to Paris for a follow-up “toilet tour” of the JCDecaux factory soon after his own trip. Gatti installed 57 permanent works of public art during his nine-year tenure at the commission, including a Keith Haring sculpture at Third and Howard.

MOSCONE LEGACY

Back in the 1970s, Mayor George Moscone supported community groups of middle-class residents in SoMa that fought against their eviction, but they were eventually displaced by the development that bears his name. Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated at City Hall by Dan White 32 years ago, on Nov. 27, 1978.

DARK BLOCK

This week, visitors can see the streetlights’ change into their illuminating position at approximately 8:45 p.m., about three and one-half hours after sunset.

This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.