About What Cheer House

Introduction

What Cheer House develops works that reinterpret historical materials for contemporary audiences through archival investigation, computational methods, and exhibition design. Historical documents, maps, datasets, photographs, and visual artifacts become the starting point for research, publications, and artistic works that illuminate cultural history through new technical forms.

What Cheer House functions simultaneously as a research environment, an exhibition platform, and a publishing space — connecting historical archives 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 Rhode Island–born 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, feeding thousands of people each day at its peak.

Beyond lodging and dining, the What Cheer House 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 crowded dining rooms and reading rooms. Though the original building no longer stands, the institution remains part of San Francisco’s historical memory.

What Cheer House takes its name from this earlier institution and from its spirit of public inquiry, exchange, and curiosity.

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 systems, 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 new forms of analysis and visualization.

Programs

Work at What Cheer House is organized across three 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 form a public environment where historical research, technology, and artistic interpretation intersect.

Principles

• Research Integrity — Sources are cited, historical context is preserved, and interpretation remains transparent.
• Computational Responsibility — Machine intelligence is used deliberately and with documented methodology. Generative systems are treated as interpretive instruments rather than autonomous creators. The role of computational processes within the work is openly acknowledged.
• 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 contemporary artist Nina Fabunmi and software developer and cultural technologist Matt Savage. Together, they combine artistic practice and computational research to develop projects that connect historical archives with contemporary cultural technologies.

Nina Fabunmi

Co-Founder · Creative Director

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 the project's exhibitions and public-facing programs. At What Cheer House, she shapes the project's artistic direction, translating research and historical materials into visual and exhibition forms.

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

Matt Savage

Co-Founder · Cultural Technologist

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.