Ware first debuted the character Jimmy Corrigan in the free local weekly newspaper New City and in Ware’s comic series Acme Novelty Library, later compiling the strips into the complete award-winning story Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. The story depicts the life of Chicagoan Jimmy Corrigan who is meeting his estranged father for the first time as an adult. The story has several flashbacks to the boyhood life of Jimmy’s grandfather, which takes place on the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago’s Jackson Park. The Exposition, which commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the new world, employed Daniel Burnham as the director of works to construct a standalone city in which the fair would take place. The collection of buildings central to the fair, known as the White City, was centered around the Court of Honor. Here is Ware’s depiction of the court as seen in the story, as well as an original photograph by C.D. Arnold, the official photographer of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
- Court of Honor from Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware New York: Pantheon, 2000.
- Photograph of the Court of Honor by C.D. Arnold. World's Columbian Exposition Photographs by C. D. Arnold, 1891-1894 collection.