San Francisco.Van Ness Avenue and Bay Street,old Fontana spaghetti factory is brick building one blo

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by Chris CarlssonDuring the early 1960s San Franciscans rose up to oppose the rampant construction of highrise apartment buildings, offices, hotels, and other commercial projects that would have created a wall along the northern waterfront had they been built. It started when developers proposed building the curving 17-story towers on the site of the old Fontana spaghetti factory just east of Fort Mason. Residents living on Russian Hill, mostly upper-class San Franciscans, organized opposition through their Russian Hill Improvement Association (RHIA). What now can be seen as a curious irony a half century later, the lawyer who represented the RHIA was Casper Weinberger, who went on to be President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Defense during his infamous military build-up and Star Wars fantasies of the 1980s.