San Francisco to Dismantle Vaillancourt Fountain
45Nov. 7, 2025
The City ofSan Franciscowill take apart and temporarily store the iconicVaillancourt Fountainfollowing an 8–5 vote by its Arts Commission, which determined it to be a safety risk. Completed in 1971 by Canadian artist Armand Vaillancourt, the 710-ton Brutalist concrete structure was built to circulate 30,000 gallons of water but has been out of commission since 2024, when it was drained amid an effort to assess the condition of its mechanical and electrical systems. Its removal paves the way for a $32.5 million renovation of Embarcadero Plaza and the nearby playground, which the city, together with a private developer, plans to turn into a five-acre park.
The Vaillancourt Fountain, a nearly forty-foot-high tangle of boxy concrete tubes, has long divided public opinion and has attracted attention as a landmark both locally and internationally. Beloved by street skaters for decades, it has been fenced off since June while city officials wrestled with its fate.SFGatereports that the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has since dealt repeatedly with the fencing being breached. The cost to restore the fountain was estimated at $29 million, while the cost of disassembling it and moving it to an off-site storage facility is projected to be $4.4 million; destroying it would cost $2.7 million.
The commission voted to store the fountain for up to three years, which “left the window open a crack” regarding the possibility that it could one day be restored, commission member Patrick Carney, an architect, told the New York Times. Carney, who noted that the commission “did not want to be accused of ignoring public safety,” voted against the proposal to dismantle the fountain.
In accordance with the California Art Preservation Act, which allows artists to protect their work from being altered or destroyed, the ninety-six-year-old Vaillancourt, the fountain’s creator, has ninety days from November 4 to arrange for the structure’s removal himself. “I don’t say I’m going to die from this,” he told the Times, “but I’m very close to it.”