Once the third-largest cannery in the United States, the ruins of the Bayside Canning Company are emblematic of the rise and fall of the town of Alviso, California. Sai Yen Chew founded the Precita Canning Company in San Francisco in 1890, but after the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires, he moved his business to Alviso, the bustling port at the southernmost tip of the San Francisco Bay. In a xenophobic time when Chinese laborers were shunned and discriminated against, Sai Yen Chew built lodging for hundreds of Chinese laborers, paid…
