San Francisco begins dismantling Vaillancourt Fountain for Embarcadero redesign

Along Embarcadero Plaza, San Francisco has begun removing the 40-foot Vaillancourt Fountain, turning a longtime civic landmark into the latest casualty of the city’s fight over who gets to define the waterfront. The fountain, one of the most recognizable and most disputed pieces of public art in downtown San Francisco, is being dismantled as part of a broader redesign of Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park into a 5-acre waterfront park.

The work comes after the San Francisco Arts Commission voted 8-5 in November 2025 to approve a temporary dismantling. City officials framed the move as an emergency removal tied to structural deterioration and public safety concerns, saying technical reports and an independent assessment identified the fountain as a hazard. A new fence now surrounds the structure as crews prepare to take it apart over about two months.

Built by Québécois artist Armand Vaillancourt and completed in 1971, according to city records, the fountain also appears in city materials as opening in 1972 as part of Lawrence Halprin’s Embarcadero Plaza design. Halprin’s original idea was not simply to place sculpture on the plaza, but to shape the experience of the space itself, using water in part to mask the noise of the then-Embarcadero Freeway.

That history is exactly what preservation advocates say is being erased. Docomomo NOCA and other supporters of the fountain’s Brutalist public-art value have argued that the piece is a landmark and part of San Francisco’s cultural identity, not just a fountain that stopped working. The city says it has been inoperable since May 2024, when its last functioning pump failed, and that the components will be moved to secure off-site storage for up to three years while officials decide whether the fountain can be restored, repaired, relocated or repurposed.

For planners, the dismantling clears the way for a reworked waterfront; for preservationists, it marks the loss of a noisy, difficult, deeply San Francisco artifact that helped define the Embarcadero’s post-freeway identity. The dispute reaches beyond one fountain. It is about whether the city’s public spaces should preserve hard-edged civic memory or be reshaped to reflect a cleaner, more flexible vision of downtown life.