Iconic, Often Reviled SF Fountain Is Down to Its Last Chance to Stave Off Removal

San Francisco could begin dismantling one of its most controversial public art pieces as soon as next month, unless the Board of Supervisors grants a request by supporters of the Vaillancourt Fountain to halt its emergency removal on Tuesday.

The hulking concrete structure, built in 1971 in the shadow of the towering Embarcadero Freeway, has sustained major corrosion and degradation that makes it an imminent safety risk and exempts it from the full California Environmental Quality Act review process, according to the city. In November, the city’s Arts Commission gave the Recreation and Parks Department the go-ahead for an expedited removal of the fountain.

Now, a coalition of art historians, landscape architects and skateboarders are down to perhaps their last chance to keep the fountain in place. They are asking supervisors to require the review process before disassembly can move forward.

“We feel that as a significant work of landscape architecture and art that is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, it should be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act,” said Charles Birnbaum, founder of the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation.

“There’s a reason why people go through a process to assess and evaluate the historic significance of a place, so we don’t make a knee-jerk reaction. To me, this is no different.”

The battle over the 710-ton jumble of blocky concrete tubes, which has been compared to the excrements of a robot dog and “dynamited debris,” comes amid a plan to transform Embarcadero Plaza and nearby Sue Bierman Park into a grassy waterfront park. In 2024, San Francisco’s parks department announced it would partner with real estate developer Boston Properties (BXP) and Downtown SF Partnership on the project.

City officials said at the time that the redevelopment would foster connectivity and community engagement, but Vaillancourt’s supporters worry that the current plans, which don’t include the fountain, abandon the history of the space.

The fountain’s rushing waters initially served to drown out the sound of cars on the nearby Embarcadero Freeway. Though the freeway came down after it was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and the fountain itself has run dry periodically over time, it served as the backdrop of numerous protests, a free outdoor U2 concert, and countless photos and videos by street skateboarders in the 1980s and ’90s.

“It has always been a destination for everything from happenings to public protests,” said Birnbaum, who called the fountain and brick-lined Embarcadero Plaza significant emblems of modernist architecture and San Francisco’s social and cultural history. “The fountain was the magnetic icon that invited engagement and participation.”

There’s been pushback since redevelopment plans were announced in 2024, but tensions have intensified in recent months after the city was granted its emergency exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act process.

In November, Recreation and Parks project manager Eoanna Goodwin told the city’s Arts Commission, which is made up of working art professionals appointed by the mayor and oversees the fountain, that one of the massive arms of the fountain had failed and was bearing weight it was not intended to support. The department put up fencing and mesh screening to prohibit access, she said, but that had been repeatedly breached and could be dangerous to residents and visitors.

“This is not a sustainable, long-term solution,” Goodwin told the commission. “Disassembly and secure storage are the appropriate next steps and safe path forward.”

An engineering firm contracted to assess the fountain last year found widespread corrosion of the structural steel and concrete, and the Planning Department wrote in October that parts of the structure could be at risk of “progressive or localized collapse” under its own weight, environmental loading or seismic activity.

But the fountain’s supporters say that degradation isn’t new. According to Birnbaum, the city has failed to do necessary maintenance work or invest in programming to keep the fountain and surrounding space a vibrant community hub.

“We’ve been involved in this site for a decade now, and it was clear the path that this was heading,” he told KQED. “The situation we find ourselves in is not an unexpected occurrence. It’s a predictable result of years of neglect.”

The appeal to the Board of Supervisors, filed by modernist conservation nonprofit Docomomo and supported by Birnbaum’s organization, alleges that parks officials invoked the emergency exemption not to mitigate an imminent risk but to avoid the long and often cumbersome CEQA process.

“The administrative record paints a clear picture: the [Recreation and Parks] Department decided to remove the Vaillancourt Fountain in late 2024 to make way for a pre-planned park renovation,” it reads. “Funding was secured for project management along with the explicitly declared strategy to use the removal of the fountain to “avoid an EIR [Environmental Impact Report].”

According to the appeal, the Planning Department granted the emergency exemption in November, shortly after it determined that the Vaillancourt Fountain was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, triggering CEQA protections.

“There’s a reason why these procedures are in place,” Birnbaum said. “There’s a reason why people go through a process to assess and evaluate the historic significance of a place, so we don’t make a knee-jerk reaction.”

Some city officials and the Recreation and Parks Department, on the other hand, said that the space isn’t being used to its full potential and that the fountain hasn’t operated as it was designed to for years.

“I think there’s a lot of folks who have fond memories of a fountain, but maybe they have memories that are connected to when the fountain was there with the Embarcadero Freeway or when the fountain was newer and working fully and in better shape,” said Supervisor Danny Sauter, who represents the area. “If you’ve lived in the neighborhood 10, 20, 30 years, you have that memory. I would say some of the newer residents frankly don’t have as much of a connection.”

In general, he said, it seems like the groups fighting for the fountain to be maintained are those with an interest in architectural history, not neighbors.

“I don’t see that same passion and attachment to it from nearby residents, for example, and neighborhood groups in the Barbary Coast and then into the adjoining neighborhoods,” he said.

If the Board of Supervisors does not grant Docomomo’s request and allows the removal of the fountain to go forward, Recreation and Parks could begin disassembly as soon as February. The department said it plans to store the fountain’s pieces in a secure location, where it could further assess its damage and possible repairs.

But arts commissioners, and fountain fans, are wary of any path to restoration. Goodwin estimated that the construction to return the fountain to working condition could cost at least $29 million.

“My fear is that once it’s removed, it opens the door to never coming back,” Arts Commissioner Patrick Carney said at the November meeting. “If it is temporarily removed without a plan and funds in place beforehand to possibly restore it or move it, then its fate may be sealed.”