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Portage Manor landmark nomination, 2020; Indiana Department of Public Welfare record, 1947; South Bend Tribune record, 1962–2023; National Register record, ref. 00000670
The county home's second life as a residence for people the older language called insane — and the modern language calls disabled — was never addressed even at pointer; it is carried here whole, from renaming to demolition's door. After a 1947 state law the St. Joseph County Infirmary became the St. Joseph County Home, and the Indiana Department of Public Welfare that year called it "truly outstanding." The second life's shadow falls in 1962, when a Tribune exposé brought a grand jury investigation and the record that some residents had been housed in jail cells. In the 1980s the home took its last name, Portage Manor, and its final form: a state-licensed health care centre housing 144 adults with disabilities and low-income seniors at 3016 Portage Avenue, South Bend — the 1906 building, entered on the National Register under reference 00000670, still doing the county's oldest work. The end is dated: closure announced by the commissioners in February 2023, litigation by four residents notwithstanding, and the residents out by the deadline of 31 July 2023. As of 2024 the building stands permanently closed and slated for demolition. The county home that received Union Township's charges in the century of the inquests thus outlived the state-hospital system that succeeded it, and closed only in this decade, within the lifetime of the town's present record.