Crews disassemble the Vaillancourt Fountain in San Francisco on Wednesday, setting the stage for a $40 million makeover of Embarcadero Plaza.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
Embarcadero Plaza, shown looking south, is undergoing a $40 million makeover.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
“R-Evolution,” the sculpture of a giant nude woman at the foot of Market Street, towers over the area that will become a large park.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
The Vaillancourt Fountain, a landmark that looked like the droppings of a concrete dog, is nearly gone from the city’s Embarcadero Plaza. It’s headed for storage, probably never to return. But that’s old news.
Better news is the $40 million plan to merge the dreary Embarcadero Plaza with nearby Sue Bierman Park and turn the area into a big grassy park. With any luck, it will be a new gateway to the city, a showpiece where Market Street meets the Embarcadero.
It’s one of the best locations in the city. It has it all: The handsome Ferry Building with the blue bay as a backdrop. On the land side, a wall of tall buildings. Between the city and the bay, a broad boulevard with one of the grandest street names in an American city: the Embarcadero.
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The area is part of the best of the old San Francisco, a seaport with a ferry station that was once the busiest terminal in the United States. You could argue that the area is part of the best of a newer San Francisco: It has been reborn. The mighty freeway that disfigured the waterfront is gone as a result of a unique San Francisco combination — citizen activism and an earthquake.
Embarcadero Plaza provides a quiet spot for lunch and a space to contemplate what the area will look like when it’s transformed.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
So now it’s time to reinvent one of the key parts of the area — Embarcadero Plaza, just to the north side of Market. It’s right near the Hyatt Regency Hotel and the office towers of the Embarcadero Center.
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Very old San Franciscans will remember when the waterfront was lined with ships, when freight trains chuffed along the Embarcadero, and when the land side of the waterfront was lined with greasy spoon restaurants and dive bars. It was a fascinating part of the city, but tough, too, always a whiff of danger. The old waterfront was fondly remembered in the fog of nostalgia, but respectable people stayed away.
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The old port faded, and redevelopment swept away much of the past, replacing it with an ugly Embarcadero Freeway that cut the city off from the waterfront.
There were other projects. Architect Lawrence Halprin designed a brick-faced Embarcadero Plaza, a big open space graced at one end by a 40-foot-high concrete fountain, stark as a square pipe. Modernists loved it.
Sue Bierman Park will become part of Embarcadero Plaza once the area is transformed.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
Time went by. The future the architects saw 60 years ago turned out to be different. Tastes changed as well, and the bold fountain, now inoperable and unsafe, came to be regarded as an eyesore. The plaza was used sometimes as an ice rink, sometimes as an event space, sometimes to house a ball court. Mostly it was windswept and empty. It was due for a change.
The new plan, rolled out a few days ago, is a project with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department in partnership with Boston Properties, which owns the Embarcadero Center. It would replace the brick and concrete plaza with a big grassy space, ringed with pathways. The plaza would be integrated with the next-door Sue Bierman Park, which covers 4 or so acres of grass.
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The Vaillancourt Fountain, which separated Sue Bierman Park and Embarcadero Plaza, would be gone, so the two parks would be brought together; pretty much one big park from Market Street north to Washington Street.
It is hard to imagine just by looking at the plans and reading the reports, so I spent a couple of hours scouting around and sitting in the park. I knew Sue Bierman a little toward the end of her career. She was the quintessential neighborhood activist of her time. She was opposed to freeways and in favor of neighborhoods, and she would have loved the park that carries her name.
Embarcadero Plaza is looking bleak now, but the scene will be much different once a world-class park takes shape there.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
It was a bit of a gray day when I was there, but there were dogs in the park and kids, and the late spring rain had brought out some daisies. It’s an urban space. On one side the green park is walled in by tall buildings, on another the poplar trees frame the Ferry Building tower, and on a third side one could see streetcars running on the Embarcadero. Just beyond, to the north and east, the bay.
It is only a couple of minutes’ walk to Embarcadero Plaza. Workers with welding torches and small cranes were taking the Vaillancourt Fountain apart. I don’t know if old landmarks have lives, but it seemed that fountain didn’t want to go. It caught fire the next day; a spark from a torch did it. Nobody hurt. It will be gone soon.
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What remains of the brick and concrete Embarcadero Plaza has fences all around, one to enclose a sport court, another to seal off the fountain. The result was to give the place a grim look, like an exercise yard at a reform school.
The city is all around — the classic Ferry Building, palm trees, the Bay Bridge in the distance. At the foot of Market Street, the statue of a 50-foot-tall woman, presiding over all of it. A lot of possibilities.
The Ferry Building tower and Vaillancourt Fountain stand in sharp contrast.
Carl Nolte/S.F. Chronicle
There are restaurants on the Embarcadero Center side of the plaza — a Boudin sourdough bakery, a pizza place, a Korean restaurant and another offering Senegalese street food.
You can sit outside in the sun and eat and imagine what it may be like when all the pieces fall in place in a year or two when the plaza is transformed.
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“We heard about a lot of people wanting a world-class, iconic park,” Eoanna Goodwin, project manager for the park department, said when they rolled out the new plan. “And that’s what we’re delivering.”