San Francisco wants to get rid of the Armand Vaillancourt fountain

The Vaillancourt Fountain, a tangle of concrete tubes that once spewed 120,000 liters of water per minute onto a public square in San Francisco, has been called many names.

Often, she is called ugly.

Herb Caen, flagship columnist of San Francisco Chronicle in the 20th^e century, thought the fountain looked like a collapsed structure, giving it a 10 on the Richter scale. In the magazine San FranciscoPulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Allan Temko nearly ran out of adjectives when he railed that the fountain was “incredibly ugly, brutal, pretentiously simplistic and literally tasteless,” made of concrete blocks that looked like feces “deposited by a giant concrete dog with square intestines.”

So one would think that the City’s proposal to replace the much-maligned fountain with native landscaping, picnic areas and other amenities would be met with applause.

But this is San Francisco, where every action begets a reaction.

According to its supporters, destroying the Vaillancourt Fountain would amount to erasing history and modern architecture, and would be contrary to the city’s reputation for quirkiness. Bono graffitied “Rock’n’Roll Stops the Traffic” on the fountain, completed in 1971, during a free U2 concert in 1987. The sculpture’s steps and ledges made it a mecca for skateboard in the 1990s.

“She’s weird and unusual,” said Ted Barrow, a skateboarder and art historian. It is a symbol of San Francisco. »

For a disappeared highway

Joined by videoconference from his studio in Montreal, Armand Vaillancourt, 96, believes that his most famous work belongs to the people. “I think people like it,” he said. She has been neglected, but she is still alive. »

The one who describes himself as a “joyful man” continues to create, but he said he was “very hurt” by this controversy.

His long white hair makes him look like a prophet when he warns: “It will be the shame of the City of San Francisco if they tear it down.” »

At its peak, people pushed their way into the 710-ton sculpture whose water drowned out the noise of the double-decker highway that passed behind it. Two years after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the damaged highway was removed, exposing the fountain and stripping it of some of its meaning.

Today, padel courts – a sport similar to pickleball – are adjacent to the fenced fountain, which no longer spews water on the Embarcadero Plaza. One side of the fountain has become a small gathering place for people with shopping carts of groceries who have nowhere else to go.

The fountain, located on the northeast edge of town at the foot of Market Street, sits near the bay where ferries carry passengers to Sausalito, Angel Island and beyond. Every Saturday, thousands of shoppers descend on the Ferry Building, drawn to the swirling, kaleidoscopic farmers’ market, known for its Black Mission figs, lemon verbena, a sought-after type of mushroom called hedgehog hydne, and other San Francisco Bay Area staples.

At noon, on a beautiful Saturday at the end of September, there was no one near the fountain. Not even homeless people.

San Francisco has proposed a $35 million renovation of the square as part of a public-private partnership. The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks asked its Arts Commission in August for permission to decommission the fountain, calling it an “architectural constraint.”

Brutalist in spite of herself

Recent reports commissioned by the City have established that the fountain’s mechanical and electrical systems are failing, that it poses an earthquake risk with hazardous materials, and that it does not comply with theAmericans with Disabilities Act (Americans with Disabilities Act).

The fountain is technically not beyond repair, according to reports, but it would cost $28,951,519.

“When the water was flowing through it, I thought it was really cool,” said Kat Anderson, chair of the department’s seven-member commission. “But it was designed to be a fountain, and it’s not a fountain anymore. »

In the late 1960s, city officials organized a design competition for the fountain, won by Armand Vaillancourt, a famous Quebec sculptor. During his 74-year career, he created works in metal, wood and concrete that can be found in museums and public spaces throughout Quebec.

Although his San Francisco fountain is included in The Atlas of Brutalist Architecturehe said in an interview that he “knew nothing about brutalism and all that.”

The fate of the Vaillancourt Fountain raises questions about unpopular public art. “It’s not a masterpiece, but it captures a moment so distinctly, and with such verve,” said John King, a former architecture critic at Chronicle and author.

It’s “one of the most truly bizarre works of public art in urban America” ​​and “a reminder of the errors of the mid-century,” he added. These are precisely the reasons why he wants to save the fountain.

In the 1960s, architects and urban planners believed that large spaces could be catalysts for people to come together, King said, but often, “those spaces turned out to be voids.”

At an Arts Commission meeting this month, speakers were almost evenly divided over the fountain. “What may seem like a strange sculpture to some speaks directly to anyone who has ever felt left out and explains why they call San Francisco home,” said Liz Waytkus, executive director of Docomomo US, which works to preserve modern architecture.

The next speaker called it a “wart.”

Negligence and danger

Julian Lake, an executive with the Bay Area Council, which represents major employers working to improve the San Francisco Bay area, said he passes the fountain every day and believes it has had its day. “It can be replaced with something equally bizarre, but inspiring,” he said.

In an interview, Charles Birnbaum, executive director of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, blamed the city for the fate of the fountain. “We are seeing the results of more than a decade of lack of maintenance and a complete lack of planning,” he lamented. People don’t feel welcome there. » The perceived message, he said, is that the City doesn’t care.

“It was not negligence,” replied Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for the Department of Recreation and Parks.

Vaillancourt learned of the threat to her fountain from her children in April, after they read the news on their phones.

“We were shocked that the City never tried to contact my father,” said his 33-year-old son, Alexis Vaillancourt, also a sculptor. In May, the Vaillancourts traveled to San Francisco to meet with municipal officials, accompanied by representatives from Quebec and the Canadian embassy. “They were polite,” said Alexis Vaillancourt. Our feeling was that they wanted to tear down the sculpture. »

Public fountains are sometimes dismantled or moved when “people in power think they are ugly or offensive,” said Michele Bogart, professor emeritus of art history at Stony Brook University and an expert on public art.

In August, a lawyer for Armand Vaillancourt sent San Francisco a formal notice¹warning that any effort to destroy the fountain would violate Vaillancourt’s “moral rights.” But once a work of art becomes part of a municipal collection, Bogart said, the artist has little or no control over the work.

As the Arts Commission prepares to vote on the fountain’s future, Vaillancourt continues to sketch, currently working on its diamond-shaped black granite tombstone. He thinks the fountain should survive him. “She is very young,” declared the artist. It should be good for a few hundred years. »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.

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