Nina Fabunmi, 'Perfect Day.' Oil on canvas. A contemporary impressionist study of San Francisco’s transit history and urban atmosphere, used as the primary visual identity for the What Cheer House About page. — Perfect Day—by Nina Fabunmi

About What Cheer House

What Cheer House is a San Francisco–based cultural research studio working across history, art, and machine intelligence.

What Cheer House develops works that reinterpret historical materials for present-day audiences through archival research, computational methods, and exhibition design. Documents, maps, datasets, photographs, and visual artifacts become the basis for publications, research projects, and artistic works that illuminate cultural history through contemporary technical forms.

It functions as a research environment, exhibition platform, and publishing space that connects the historical archive with contemporary computational practice.

Historical Context

The original What Cheer House stood at the corner of Sacramento and Leidesdorff streets in San Francisco’s early commercial district. Completed in 1852 by entrepreneur R. B. Woodward, it became one of the best-known establishments of Gold Rush–era San Francisco. Designed to serve laborers, sailors, immigrants, and others passing through the city, the house offered clean lodging and substantial meals at modest prices.

Beyond lodging and dining, the What Cheer House also developed an unusual cultural dimension. The building included a large reading room and library stocked with books and newspapers from around the world. In 1860, Woodward expanded the enterprise by opening a museum within the hotel, displaying natural history specimens, minerals, and curiosities gathered from across the Pacific.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the What Cheer House functioned as a crossroads of early San Francisco society. Merchants, immigrants, and fortune seekers mingled with journalists and writers—including figures such as Mark Twain and Bret Harte—in its busy public rooms. Though the original building no longer stands, the institution remains part of the city’s historical memory.

A Note on the Name

The name “What Cheer House” is most visibly associated today with the large and well-known building in Sacramento. San Francisco’s house came first, however, and both belonged to a broader nineteenth-century world of independent hotels, lodging houses, and civic institutions bearing the name. Other What Cheer Houses operated in San Jose, Los Angeles, Petaluma, mining towns across California, and even Honolulu. The phrase itself—an old English greeting meaning roughly “good cheer”—circulated widely in the commercial and social culture of the period.

What Cheer House takes its name from the San Francisco original and from the spirit of inquiry, exchange, and curiosity that it represented.

Research and Practice

Work at What Cheer House begins with primary sources. Historical newspapers, maps, archival collections, datasets, photographs, and material artifacts serve as the foundation for investigation.

These materials are studied with both scholarly care and computational tools. Custom software, mapping techniques, and generative processes are developed as instruments of interpretation, allowing patterns, structures, and cultural signals within the archive to become visible in new ways.

In this context, computation becomes a cultural lens: a way of examining archives, language, and historical systems through analysis, visualization, and form.

Program Areas

Work at What Cheer House is organized across three public programs:

Archive—curated historical materials, essays, and contextual documents drawn from cultural and institutional collections.
Research—investigations that combine archival sources with computational analysis to explore historical questions.
Art—generative and studio works developed through research-driven artistic practice.

Together, these programs create a public framework for historical research, computational inquiry, and artistic interpretation.

Principles

Research Integrity—Sources are cited, historical context is preserved, and interpretation remains transparent.
Computational Responsibility—Machine intelligence is used deliberately and with documented method. Generative systems are treated as interpretive instruments, not autonomous creators.
Exhibition Clarity—Complex systems are presented with restraint, legibility, and accessibility for public audiences.
Enduring Craft—Works are designed to remain meaningful beyond short technological cycles.

Founders

What Cheer House was founded by artist Nina Fabunmi and software developer and cultural technologist Matt Savage. Together, they bring artistic practice and computational research into dialogue through projects that connect historical archives with contemporary cultural technologies.

Nina Fabunmi is a contemporary artist and educator whose practice emphasizes landscape, material sensitivity, and historical awareness. Her work brings visual intelligence and artistic discipline to What Cheer House’s exhibitions and public-facing programs.

At What Cheer House, she shapes the project’s artistic direction, translating research and historical materials into visual, spatial, and exhibition forms.

Matt Savage is a software developer and cultural technologist whose work spans archival research, data systems, and computational interpretation. His archival practice includes substantial work correcting historical newspaper text in the California Digital Newspaper Collection, where he is listed among its “Text Correctors Hall of Fame” contributors.

At What Cheer House, he develops the systems and methods through which archival materials can be examined, interpreted, and presented through contemporary computational tools.