action Since March 2025

Docomomo NOCA believes that we 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.

The unique juxtaposition of art, architecture, and expression at Embarcadero Plaza remain a symbol of San Francisco’s commitment to free speech, cultural practices, and bold, challenging public art. Since March 2025 we have called on San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (RPD) and the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) to:

1. Retain Embarcadero Plaza and the Vaillancourt Fountain while developing a new future for the park

2. Pursue an open and transparent public engagement process that listens to all voices

Read our official statement to San Francisco Recreation and Park and the San Francisco Arts Commission, shared on April 12 2025, here.

Due to the local, national, and international significance of Embarcadero Plaza and the Vaillancourt Fountain, we assembled a coalition of leading organizations and voices in the heritage and preservation fields that include Armand Vaillancourt and the family of Lawrence Halprin. Our coalition shared a joint letter with SFAC and SFRPD on September 19, 2025.

NOCA board members and friends attended all community meetings and public hearings on the future of the Vaillancourt Fountain as the threat of demolition and removal increased. Hundreds of public comments were shared with SFAC, SFRPD, the Board of Supervisors, and the Mayor’s office using our template, and community members on both sides of the issue came to well-attended hearings throughout the fall.

Despite the fact that the SF Planning Department found the fountain to be an eligible individual historic resource in October 2025, SFRPD officially requested the fountain be removed just days later. Citing the presence of lead, asbestos, and structural concerns, the removal was framed as a public safety emergency that would allow the city to skip all historic review and public involvement by invoking an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). A vote from the SFAC approved this request on November 3, 2025.

NOCA filed an administrative appeal to the Board of Supervisors (BOS), arguing that there was no emergency, and released hundreds of pages of public records to illustrate a pattern of unlawful precommitment. BOS denied the appeal in January 2026.

A not-for-profit partner organization “Friends of the Plaza” formed in February 2026 to pursue legal action and halt the imminent removal of the Vaillancourt Fountain.

Related Actions

Please continue to share and document your stories about this significant and beloved place. Use hashtags #saveEMB #savevaillancourtfountain

Related actions by partner organizations:

• Read and sign the “Save Embarcadero Plaza” petition focused on skateboarding history.

• Read and sign the “Sauvons La Vaillancourt Fountain” petition focused on the fountain as an internationally significant work of public art.

Site History and Significance

Check out the history of Embarcadero Plaza from 1860-present at EmbarcaderoPlaza.com!

Embarcadero Plaza and Vaillancourt Fountain were conceived as San Francisco’s downtown was being transformed into a Modern, post-World War II city. This project was made possible by a confluence of post-war prosperity, federal funding for urban renewal, and the conviction among city leaders that high-quality art and public spaces could be accessible to everyone. World-renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin designed the Plaza, and noted Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt’s design for the Fountain was selected through a high-profile international design competition that pre-dated and inspired our modern percent-for-art programs.

As with nearly all of Halprin’s landscapes, the integration of movement was created with water, and the Vaillancourt Fountain was selected for its powerful artistic vision and its core belief in the importance of public participation, interaction, and discovery. Halprin’s initial inspiration for Embarcadero Plaza was the Spanish plazas and Italian piazzas that have stood for hundreds of years, serving as town squares, gathering spaces, dining areas, celebratory forums, and places of assembly for free expression.

Contributing Property to a Significant Modern-Era Landscape Design 

Embarcadero Plaza is the point of origin and departure for a series of publicly accessible civic places leading miles into San Francisco. 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 is a known historic resource that has already been studied and evaluated by numerous historic preservation and landscape history professionals. It, ,along with its fountain, have been identified as a contributing property within the larger Market Street Cultural Landscape District.

Vaillancourt Fountain: Icon of Abstract Expressionism and Brutalism

As described in the SF Planning Department’s statement that the Vaillancourt Fountain is an eligible individual historic resource, the fountain is

“a distinctive example of a late twentieth century monumental and participatory urban fountain that expresses the characteristics of the Abstract Expressionist movement in sculpture and Brutalist movement in architecture. Part of the San Francisco Civic Art Collection, the fountain is sculptor Armand Vaillancourt’s largest and most well-known works of sculpture, while also being recognized as a site-specific feature of the urban built environment. Recognized as a work of art as well as a feature of the built urban environment, the Vaillancourt Fountain is a site-specific response to the freeway and surrounding high-rise development, designed to be oriented towards the Embarcadero Plaza to dampen the nose of the freeway. Water cascading into the pool and the metal stairs allowed for public interaction with all sides of the fountain. The exposed, rough concrete finish chosen for the fountain responds to the urban context of the surrounding construction and embodies characteristics of Brutalist design, as exhibited in monumental urban plaza fountains of the late twentieth century.” (SF Planning Department, Historic Resource Evaluation Response, October 2025)

The fountain relates deeply to its site and context, which includes the adjacent Embarcadero Center and Embarcadero Hyatt complex completed by John Portman as part of the Golden Gateway Redevelopment area. This Brutalist and Late Modernist complex is a fitting companion to the fountain it overlooks.

Together, the plaza and fountain create a sense of monumentality and cater to specific uses and communities. While their context has changed, with the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway and the revitalization of our waterfront, this significant landscape and sculpture have value worth preserving.

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 as an essential venue for civic engagement and public demonstrations, and as a world-renowned location for the development of skate culture in the late 80s and early 90s. 

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. Over its half-century history, this includes Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, AIDS Marches of the 1990s, Anti-War marches of the 1990s and early 2000s, and more recently, the BLM marches of 2020, Women’s marches in 2017, 2020, and 2021, and other massive civic gatherings of 2025 including No Kings. The plaza remains a critical location for public assembly that is well-served by its open, hardscape design.   

Skateboarding

In his petition “Save Embarcadero Plaza,” former Docomomo NOCA Board Member Ted Barrow shared: 

“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.”

The recent exhibit and publication “Epicenter,” showcased the role of the space in defining skate culture in the early 1990s. Photographer Jacob Rosenberg shared that

“For me, one of the motivations for the show was wanting people and the city to understand the significance of this place,” said Rosenberg, referring to the controversial plans that would redesign much of the area. “This is a part of the country people came to because they thought differently about traditional ideas. Skateboarding is untraditional in its attitude, it’s a welcoming place for people who don’t feel connected to normal society, which you could say about San Francisco.” (Tony Bravo, “Skaters claim S.F.’s most controversial fountain,” San Francisco Chronicle)

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.