The effort to dismantle San Francisco’s Vaillancourt Fountain is off to a rocky start, as construction crews accidentally started a fire while disassembling the structure’s cantilevered arms.
“During torch-cutting activity, debris inside the tubes ignited,” a spokesperson for the San Francisco Arts Commission tells The Art Newspaper. “The team responded by continuously spraying water to control and quickly extinguish the fire. There was no major damage.” The spokesperson added that the fountain’s welded steel tubes are being cut by torches and, “as expected, this process produces sparks”.
Work to dismantle the Armand Vaillancourt's 1971 Brutalist fountain began on Monday (4 May), after the California appeals court denied a request by the local coalition Friends of the Plaza to halt its removal.
“The city spent the last year arguing that the fountain was riddled with asbestos and needed to be removed for safety,” says Jack McCarthy of Friends of the Plaza. “Now it's being removed without an air-quality permit, in open air without tenting, and a fire has broken out.”
During a site visit on Wednesday (6 May), it did not appear that workers were wearing masks, respirators, hazmat suits or any kind of protective clothing to mitigate exposure to lead or asbestos. In addition, there were no signs warning passersby—including those playing padel at the courts next to the fountain or eating lunch in the plaza—of potential exposure to hazardous materials.
When asked about this, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department says that the asbestos is “encapsulated” and that workers “are not disturbing it”. However, the agency could not explain what “encapsulated” meant in this context, whether the city had sought guidance on whether permits were needed or applied for, nor whether it had considered the need to warn the public of potential exposure.
Vaillancourt Fountain, San Francisco Photo: Wally Gobetz via Flickr
“We're having a hard time understanding how the city's claim that they needed to remove the fountain for safety could hold water when they're currently potentially exposing the public and workers to hazardous materials in this manner,” McCarthy says.
Friends of the Plaza has been working to bring attention to the plight of Vaillancourt Fountain and the surrounding Lawrence Halprin-designed Embarcadero Plaza. Evidence suggests that the Recreation and Park Department had previously tasked the developer BXP with a variety of maintenance responsibilities for both the fountain and plaza in the past five decades.
A lack of proper maintenance appears to have contributed to the failure of the fountain’s pumps, as much as the generally poor state of the plaza. The city and BXP cited those factors as justification for their proposal to redevelop the plaza and remove the fountain. For its part, the city has offered myriad excuses for why the fountain should be removed from the site, despite the protests of citizens who repeatedly asked in public meetings whether a new park might incorporate the fountain in some way. This included arguments that the fountain was a threat to public safety and security, either because of structural instability or the presence of lead and asbestos, and that it attracted people experiencing homelessness.
Though the city initially wanted to demolish the fountain outright, sustained opposition—including from the nonagenarian, Montreal-based artist himself—appeared to change local officials' mind. In November 2025, the city decided to dismantle the fountain and store it for three years, at an additional cost of approximately $4m. That decision came just days after the city’s planning department determined the fountain was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
“While we are disappointed with the court's decision to allow the removal of the fountain to begin with, we remain committed to advocating for Vaillancourt Fountain and Embarcadero Plaza,” McCarthy says. “The city has stated their plan is to carefully remove the fountain so it can be studied and evaluated. We will continue to be engaged with the city in all public processes related to the future of the fountain and Embarcadero Plaza.”