Embarcadero Plaza sits between Market Street and the waterfront, defined by its wide, brick-paved expanse and the Vaillancourt Fountain, a jagged, hollow mountain of precast concrete pipes. The city built this plaza in nineteen seventy-one as part of a massive urban renewal project that famously dismantled the elevated Embarcadero Freeway. Armando Vaillancourt designed the fountain to provoke, and during its dedication, protesters climbed the structure to spray paint it, beginning a decades-long argument over whether the sculpture is an eyesore or a masterpiece.
Embarcadero Plaza
park garden