San Francisco Arts Commission approves measure to disassemble the Vaillancourt Fountain
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) voted eight to five at a November 3, 2025, meeting to approve the disassembly and storage of the Vaillancourt Fountain. As detailed in an article the previous day from The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF)—Mismanaged efforts to demolish the Vaillancourt Fountain take a new turn—in a surprise announcement on Friday, October 31, 2025, the public learned that the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (RPD) had suddenly determined that the Vaillancourt Fountain at Embarcadero Plaza posed “an immediate and serious hazard” and asked the SFAC to disassemble the work and put it into storage.
In a San Francisco Chronicle exclusive by veteran reporter Sam Whiting, RPD spokesperson Tamara Aparton told Whiting the disassembly and storage, which would cost $4.4 million, nearly $2 million more than demolition, “is solely for public safety reasons, after two reports have stated that the fountain poses an immediate and serious hazard.” The timing is significant because two days earlier a Historic Resources Review prepared by the city’s own Planning department was released and it had determined that the artwork was eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, which offered it some protection under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The determination affirmed the findings of the earlier city-commissioned study by consulting firm Page & Turnbull’s 122-page Vaillancourt Fountain Conditions Assessment, dated June 2, 2025.
RPD obtained a letter from the city’s Planning department exempting the fountain from CEQA thus allowing the work to be disassembled “to eliminate an immediate public threat.” The "immediate" hazard claim and CEQA exemption rely on two “reports”—a letter from the Department of Building Inspection and a DCI Engineers fifteen-page report dated May 19, 2025—neither of which say anything about an “immediate” hazard.
While RPD spokesperson Tamara Aparton told the Chronicle putting the fountain into storage “is a temporary measure that does not have anything to do with [its] ultimate fate,” the reality is that there’s been a bull’s-eye on the plaza and fountain for years. RPD’s General Manager Phil Ginsburg said during an October 17, 2024, Recreation and Park Commission meeting that he started having conversations with developer BXP (formerly Boston Properties), which is the largest commercial landlord in the city and owns Embarcadero Center next to the plaza, about redeveloping the plaza "eight to ten years ago.”
The period of storage is limited to three years. After that time, it's unclear what will happen to the fountain.
In a statement following the vote, TCLF's President & CEO Charles A. Birnbaum said: “The Arts Commission was entrusted with the care of 96-year-old Armand Vaillancourt’s widely acknowledged greatest work, his only public commission in the U.S., and one that was recently determined by San Francisco Planning to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places; for years the commission deliberately decided not to properly maintain the artwork and now they’ve voted to pardon and absolve themselves, and by extension the Recreation and Park Department, for their poor stewardship decisions. Unfortunately, this is part of a broad and dangerous national trend.”
