{"id":39834,"date":"2025-11-05T23:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/39834\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T23:00:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:00:34","slug":"san-franciscos-vaillancourt-fountain-will-be-dismantled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/39834\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco’s Vaillancourt Fountain Will Be Dismantled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe San Francisco<\/a> Arts Commission board of directors has voted to dismantle a controversial concrete fountain by\u00a0Armand Vaillancourt<\/a> at Embarcadero Plaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Monday, November 3, the board voted eight to five to remove the brutalist Vaillancourt Fountain to make way for the plaza\u2019s redevelopment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe recreation and parks department reportedly plans to spend about $4.4 million to hire a disassembly consultant to take apart the fountain and store the pieces for three years. The department has said that the fountain had previously fallen into disrepair and was a considered a safety hazard\u2014two arguments that have been met with skepticism from critics. <\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Sunday, November 2, the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has been fighting to preserve the monument, disputed the alledged immediate safety risk.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor years, the [Arts] Commission deliberately decided not to properly maintain the artwork and now they\u2019ve voted to pardon and absolve themselves, and by extension the Recreation and Parks Department, for their poor stewardship decisions,\u201d Cultural Landscape Foundation president Charles Birnbaum said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tTamara xd, the spokesperson for San Francisco\u2019s recreation and parks department, told the San Francisco Standard<\/a>: \u201cPeople are regularly breaching the fence, cutting through the mesh, and climbing into and inside of the 10-ton corroded arms to commit vandalism, and even to sleep inside the fountain\u2019s structure, which independent engineers and [the Department of Building Inspection] have confirmed are at risk of collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAparton added that \u201ccombined with asbestos and lead hazards, it\u2019s harder to imagine a clearer public safety issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe removal of the fountain and redevelopment of the plaza have been an ongoing source of controversy<\/a>, with The\u00a0Art Newspaper<\/a>\u00a0previously reporting that city officials had allegedly discussed redeveloping the plaza roughly a decade before these plans were made public in 2024. The plans did not seem to include the plaza or\u00a0public art<\/a>\u00a0asset, which the city has a legal responsibility to maintain. City officials have said, however, that this is simply not true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Arts Commission board of directors has voted to dismantle a controversial concrete fountain by\u00a0Armand Vaillancourt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[5391,5392,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-39834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-armand-vaillancourt","9":"tag-public-art","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}