The Endangered 8: 2024 

A partial roof collapse in 2023 has hastened the alarming deterioration of this long-abandoned City Landmark in Alviso. Once the third-largest cannery in the United States, the Bayside Canning Company was established here in 1908 by Chinese immigrant Sai Yin Chew and later expanded into this Spanish Revival plant by his son Thomas Foon Chew, who employed a diverse workforce of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipinos, and other ethnicites at a time of otherwise widespread discrimination. Asparagus, cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, ketchup, and a variety of sauces were all processed here before the cannery’s closure during the Great Depression. Today the site is a near ruin, but stabilization would allow for eventual public access and a creative reuse for this important cultural landmark.