This flatiron building from 1907 at Columbus Avenue and Kearny Street in North Beach used to be cream with white trim, but last year it was repainted charcoal with onyx accents. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

In the world of San Francisco architecture, black is the new black.

It's the color of choice on a 37-story Market Street apartment tower and a six-story condominium building in Dogpatch. Fresh coats of black paint adorn downtown hotels and retooled houses across the city's neighborhoods. More examples are on the way, including a building that will rise two blocks from City Hall and be clad in glazed tiles of black and gray.

The trend is becoming as ubiquitous as food trucks. It's a surefire way to turn heads. But a little novelty goes a long way.

When a single black structure pops out from a corner or in the middle of a block, the contrast can give an energetic jolt to a familiar scene. But as more owners and architects use dark cloaks to look sharp, there's a very real danger that the eye-catching exception could spread across some districts like an oil spill.

Architectural darkness in this city renowned for crisp light and soft fog is not new: Wood-shingled homes by the likes of Julia Morgan and Willis Polk are treasured landmarks on local hills. The Jefferson Airplane bought a mansion at 2400 Fulton St. and painted it black in 1968, the same year that One Post St. opened, a 38-story slab of deep gray granite.

Towers such as One Post startled residents who still saw their city as an overgrown village, and the Urban Design Plan released in 1971 decreed that new buildings should "avoid extreme contrasts in color." A similar note was struck in the Downtown Plan of 1985: "disharmonious colors or building materials should be avoided. Buildings should be light in color."

While those guidelines are still on the books, they're anything but absolute. Look no further than the corner at 10th and Market streets, where the NEMA apartment complex is almost complete.

The design is by Handel Architects, the firm responsible for the glassy blue Millennium Tower at Fremont and Mission streets, but this one is as startling as the Millennium is sleek. There are two towers, 37 stories at Market and 24 stories to the south, each clad in black metal panels from the sidewalk to the roof.

Since construction isn't finished, it's too early to pass judgment. The result so far, though, is almost menacing - a grim ebony wall along 10th Street despite a jagged crown on the tallest peak and other details to jazz things up.

A blunt beacon

One hopes this will change as the facade is completed, the metal and glass are washed, lights come on in the main tower and the street comes to life. In the meantime, it's the blunt beacon that shines a light on widespread changes at a smaller scale.

Some are as emphatic as the single-family home on the 1300 block of 20th Street on Potrero Hill where a standard two-story shell was painted black and the third-floor addition comes with a perforated metal screen that folds up and down like a garage door. Others use black as a foil to bright colors, such as a new five-story apartment building at Market and Noe streets with vivid orange bays that leap from a backdrop of dark metal slats.

Older buildings are taking a dark turn as well. Hotel Union Square at Powell and Ellis streets last year was repainted so that the brick walls have vertical bands of black and white - owner Yvonne Detert of Personality Hotels likens the effect to a tuxedo. Or the four-story flatiron building from 1907 at Columbus Avenue and Kearny Street, which until March was cream with white trim but now is charcoal with onyx accents.

"We needed a paint job and wanted to keep things simple, so the architecture would speak for itself," said Matias Drago, property manager of 222 Columbus. "We liked the idea of something dark, something cool."

There's no denying the appeal in small doses. Black buildings catch the eye, command attention.

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