San Francisco’s much-loved, much-derided and nonfunctional Vaillancourt Fountain is in the crosshairs again after 54 years of existence, with city officials calling it decrepit, unsafe and too costly to fix and pushing for its removal from Embarcadero Plaza to make way for a reconceived park .

As in the past, the notion of eliminating the concrete-tube assemblage has sparked passionate arguments for and against the brutalist sculpture, with park-renovation advocates contending that the hulking fountain has had its day, and local, national and international entities variously insisting that the artwork and the plaza it occupies are aesthetically and historically significant and must be kept and rehabilitated.

The preservationists cite the fountain’s place in modernist history, its popul

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