Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain: Place-keeping while Place-making

The Northern California chapter of Docomomo US calls on the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and Public Arts Commission to preserve Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain in the Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park Renovation Project. Docomomo US is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and conserving the Modern Movement’s buildings, sites, and neighborhoods. The concrete and brick plaza, and its iconic Brutalist fountain are, together, a significant Modernist landmark of San Francisco design and culture. Read our official statement to San Francisco Recreation and Parks and the San Francisco Arts Commission HERE.

Vaillancourt Fountain by Québécois artist Armand Vaillancourt in 1971. Image courtesy of San Francico Public Library.

This 5-acre park redesign, the product of a public-private partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, BXP, the Downtown SF Partnership, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Developments, threatens to demolish a historically significant Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain when it breaks ground next year. 

Call to Action

Local, regional, and state agencies and the public must work to support the preservation of historically and culturally significant places, with particular attention to those used by marginalized communities for free speech and assembly.

We advocate that this unique juxtaposition of art, architecture, and expression remain a symbol of San Francisco’s commitment to free speech, cultural practices, and bold, challenging public art. We call on San Francisco Parks and Recreation and the San Francisco Arts Commission to:

1. Preserve Embarcadero Plaza’s brick paving and distinctive footprint, and

2. Preserve Vaillancourt Fountain with recirculating water.

Join us in advocating

Please write to the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department and the San Francisco Arts Commission to urge them to preserve Embarcadero Plaza and the Vaillancourt Fountain. We encourage you to personalize this email and share personal stories and memories about this historic place. CLICK HERE to contact SF Recreation and Parks and the San Francisco Arts Commission. We provide an email template but encourage you to personalize the contents.

• Contact your district supervisor.
• Attend the next Embarcadero Plaza & Sue Bierman Park Renovation Community Meeting by SFRPD and BXP - date TBD. Sign up for updates here.
• Read and sign the “Save Embarcadero Plaza” petition focused on skateboarding history.
• Share and document your stories about this significant and beloved place. Use hashtags #saveEMB #saveVaillancourt and #docomomonoca.

Vaillancourt Fountain by Québécois artist Armand Vaillancourt in 1971. Image courtesy of San Francico Public Library.

Threats and Urgency

Your advocacy must be heard as San Francisco looks at the plaza’s redesign at this particular moment in time. We highlight the following threats to Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain:

• The current project has a rapid timeline for groundbreaking, with the removal of the Vaillancourt Fountain and plaza to begin in 2026.  

• The current federal administration’s attitude is hostile towards preservation (threats include: censorship, firing employees, and cutting resources at agencies like the National Park Service); this is already impacting places of cultural significance, such as the erasure of trans and queer people from the website of the Stonewall National Historic Landmark.

• Its recent construction: Late-modernist and more recent places worldwide are just barely entering the standard fifty-year timeframe, the age at which built resources are typically evaluated for historical significance in preservation advocacy and the public’s understanding of design significance.

• The area is in poor condition, partly due to a lack of maintenance funding and upkeep. 

• Piecemeal change over time has cloudd the original design intent, obscures cohesion, and impacts usability.

Site History and Significance

Docomomo US/NOCA considers Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain to be highly significant based on the following criteria:

Contributing Property to a Significant Modern-era Landscape Design 

Embarcadero Plaza is the point of departure for a series of publicly accessible civic places leading miles into San Francisco. From banality to reverence, a broad public uses these spaces: commuters, workers, residents, students, tourists, skateboarders, and attendees in parades, marches, and festivals. And it was designed to function this way. The Market Street Development Project, designed by renowned late 20th-century architects and landscape architects, including Lawrence Halprin, Mario Ciampi, and J. Carl Warnecke, was built to modernize and unify the central spine of downtown San Francisco. The street, its transit stations, and seven plazas —including the monumental United Nations and Embarcadero Plazas — share a palette of forms, materials, and amenities. Notably, it incorporated light fixtures, art, and other elements from previous eras. Embarcadero Plaza carries its trademarks: brick hardscape and bold, controversial architectural and artistic features.   

Embarcadero Plaza has already been studied and evaluated by numerous historic preservation and landscape history professionals, who have identified it as a contributing property within a larger significant Modern-era landscape (referred to as the Market Street Cultural Landscape District). Staff at the San Francisco Planning Department and the State Historic Preservation Office have reviewed and concurred with these evaluations.

Vaillancourt Fountain: Icon of Brutalism

Vaillancourt Fountain, Icon of Brutualism. Photo by Barrett Reiter.

Vaillancourt Fountain, in particular, must be understood in terms of its original physical context next to the Embarcadero Freeway, although that context has since changed. Its original role as a “fountain to hide a freeway” was designed to dilute the roadway’s sound and re-establish the historic connection between Market Street and the Ferry Building.  The fountain is a striking example of Brutalist architecture. Created by Québécois artist Armand Vaillancourt in 1971, this 40-foot-high fountain is a testament to the transformative vision of the project. Like other Halprin plazas containing fountains, the plaza is meant for public participation. It invites people to step beneath the fountain’s large overhangs and, atop stairwells and catwalks, creates unique views of the San Francisco skyline. 

Initially conceived to complement the now-demolished Embarcadero Freeway, the fountain has outlived its original context and evolved into a freestanding artistic statement. This resilient monument has survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and multiple attempts at removal over its lifetime.

Together, the plaza and fountain create a sense of monumentality and cater to specific uses and communities. While the context has changed, this significant landscape and sculpture have value worth preserving.

Photo of 1981 strike on National Secretaries Day by Chris Carlsson as seen on Foundsf.org, [https://www.foundsf.org/Office_Workers_on_Strike:_San_Francisco_1981]

Skate & Speech: Historic Significance & Cultural Legacy

Since 1971, Embarcadero Plaza and its fountain have supported and influenced the evolution of unique San Francisco culture and history. We highlight two roles demonstrating its historical and cultural significance: civic engagement, public demonstrations, and skateboarding. 

Civic Engagement & Public Demonstrations 

Vaillancourt Fountain is the best-known public sculpture in San Francisco and is part of the personal history of countless San Franciscans. It is not only an interactive and sculptural water feature; the fountain gained additional cultural significance when Vaillancourt himself inscribed "Québec libre!" on it during its dedication, advocating for Québec independence. This political expression established the fountain as a symbol of free speech and artistic freedom.

Vaillancourt’s sculpture and political act dovetail in meaning with the function of the surrounding plaza, which is frequently used for free speech. Lawrence Halprin drew inspiration from Siena's Piazza del Campo, an expansive brick plaza designed for civic and political activities in Italy.

Embarcadero Plaza is a destination and point of departure for countless marches and protests down Market Street. This is a noted area of significance in the MSCLD, which connects this space to the labor movement, women’s suffrage, civil rights, LGBTQ liberation and pride, anti-war protests, and peace celebrations. Today’s use for civic engagement and public demonstration continues that significance to the present day.

The photograph included here shows office workers on National Secretaries Day in 1981, during a 19-week strike. First published in Processed World #1 and #2, April and August 1981 respectively, some of this social history is now hosted on the San Francisco digital history archive FoundSF.org; Office Workers on Strike: San Francisco 1981. Note the concrete curl on which they sit: this is one of the plaza’s elements (now demolished) designed by William Turnbull and which soon became integral to the trajectory of skateboarding worldwide.   

Skateboarding

In his petition “Save Embarcadero Plaza,” Docomomo Northern California Chapter Board Member Ted Barrow writes: 

“For skateboarders, the surrounding Embarcadero Plaza, formerly Justin Herman Plaza, has been an iconic, world-class park that has honored San Francisco’s history on the waterfront for the last five decades. Redesigning the plaza without skateboarding in mind and completely destroying the last vestiges of the most famous skate spot in the world would erase a vital part of skateboarding’s history, not just in San Francisco, but worldwide.”

— Ted Barrow

Notably, skateboarding evolved in direct relation to the specific forms and materials that exist in this particular plaza, such as the bricks and the low concrete band around Vaillancourt Fountain. While many of these forms have already been removed, it is not too late to preserve what remains.

Case Studies

These joyful, youthful, and necessary uses of the plaza don’t solve the plaza’s challenges. Like other Modernist public works, Embarcadero Plaza oscillates grandly between sparse/calm and frenetic/crowded and, along with Vaillancourt Fountain, has been maligned and under-maintained. We recognize these challenges and highlight a few precedents when considering its future: 

• Boston City Hall Plaza, a large brick plaza, with similar challenges, also encompassing a monumental Brutalist icon, the recently-landmarked city hall, redesigned in 2022;

• United Nations Skate Plaza, the local 2023 project that balanced skateboarding with preserving the United Nations Plaza, another of Halprin’s monumental brick plazas.

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References

1. https://sfrecpark.org/1819/Embarcadero-Plaza-and-Sue-Bierman-Park-R - Embarcadero Plaza and Sue Bierman Park Renovation Project homepage 

2. The Cultural Landscape Foundation Landslide Update: Embarcadero Plaza  The Cultural Landscape Foundation, “Landslide Update: Embarcadero Plaza.” March 21, 2025. https://www.tclf.org/landslide-update-embarcadero-plaza 

3. Better Market Street Draft EIR, Vol. II, “Market Street Cultural Landscape District.” https://sfmea.sfplanning.org/Better%20Market%20Street%20Draft%20EIR%20-%20Vol%20II.pdf 

4. Market Street Cultural Landscape District: Embarcadero Plaza to Octavia Street - Historic American Landscape Survey

5. "Embarcadero Plaza is a living shrine to skateboarding history — don’t desecrate it" 

6. This Old Ledge: Embarcadero 

7. “People hate this huge S.F. fountain. Here’s why the city absolutely should keep it.” John King, San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 2024. [shareable link]

8.  The ‘70s Turn 50: Map. Docomomo US/Northern California www.docomomo-noca.org/70s-turn-50-noca-map