The multiarmed Vaillancourt Fountain, a polarizing San Francisco landmark near the glistening bay, will be dismantled after the city’s Arts Commission voted on Monday to remove it because of safety concerns.
Taking down the brutalist fountain, which admirers say embodies San Francisco weird, will enable the city and a private developer to convert Embarcadero Plaza and a nearby playground into a five-acre waterfront park.
For decades after the fountain was installed in 1971, it gushed 30,000 gallons of water a minute from its cubed, concrete tubes. People could leap from one stepping stone to another as the sound of the water engulfed them. It became a haven for skateboarders.
But its pump system broke last year, and city-funded reports found corrosion and major mechanical and electrical problems. An engineer’s report described its condition as hazardous, especially in a major earthquake.
The Arts Commission voted to store the fountain for up to three years rather than demolish it, meaning it could hypothetically be renovated. Armand Vaillancourt, the 96-year-old Canadian sculptor who created the fountain, doubts that will happen.
“They know when they remove the sculpture, it’s the end of the work,” Vaillancourt said from his Montreal studio, adding, “From a city that is supposed to be avant-garde, it’s a shame.”
San Francisco officials say that dismantling and storing the fountain will cost an estimated $4.4 million. They say fixing it would require nearly $29 million and destroying it would cost $2.7 million.
Charles Birnbaum, the chief executive of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, said the city had neglected the fountain and called the funding for storage “hush money.”
“This is a major and highly technical effort, essential to determining what comes next for the 710-ton artwork,” Tamara Aparton, a spokeswoman for the city’s Recreation and Park Department, said on Tuesday. “Rather than casting aspersions, we’d prefer to work collaboratively on next steps.”
Before the arts commissioners decided to dismantle the fountain in an 8-to-5 vote at Monday’s meeting, the focus was on safety, not on artistry.
Eoanna Goodwin, a Recreation and Park Department project manager who is overseeing the park renovation, told the commission that “unauthorized entries persist” at the fountain, making its presence “a life safety emergency.”
Patrick Carney, an architect and commission member who voted against dismantling the fountain, said in an interview that the commissioners “did not want to be accused of ignoring public safety.” By placing the fountain in storage, he said, the city “left the window open a crack.”
During a public comment section of the meeting, one woman, Jillian Sobel, called the Vaillancourt Fountain “the most beautiful piece of polarizing art I’ve ever seen.” A restaurateur and a manager of a fitness facility countered that the surrounding area was dead and that the fountain stood in the way of revitalization. Chantelle Vaillancourt, a mechanical engineering student who is Vaillancourt’s granddaughter, described the fountain as “a bold manifestation of creativity.”
On Tuesday, Armand Vaillancourt received a letter from the city attorney’s office that gave him 90 days to remove the fountain before the city would dismantle it.
“I don’t say I’m going to die from this,” he said, “but I’m very close to it.”
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