The Morris Inn, at the Boundary

Dedicated 1952 · Closed for rebuilding 2012–2013 · Open today

Boundary: The Morris Inn stands on the University of Notre Dame's campus in the unincorporated community of Notre Dame, Indiana — outside the South Bend city limits. It is printed here, boundary stated, because it is the university's own house and the lodging of record for the campus's visitors; the Saint Mary's and Holy Cross ground beside it is treated the same way throughout this record. The inn was built with Ernest M. Morris's gift of one million dollars. Morris, of Notre Dame's class of 1906, died in May 1951 and never saw the house his gift raised; the inn was the first structure of the university's post-war building program. Its dedication is carried in two forms: April 1952 in the encyclopedia's account, May 1952 in Notre Dame's own Facilities record — both printed, neither settled here. It opened with ninety-two rooms.

The inn's second life began with a closing: on 21 October 2012 it shut its doors for the first time in sixty years, for a renovation and expansion funded in part by a fifteen-million-dollar gift from Morris's daughter Ernestine Raclin — the arts patron whose giving runs through this record — with the Carmichael Foundation and family. The project cost more than thirty million dollars and nearly doubled the building, from some 72,000 to about 137,500 square feet. The Morris Inn reopened at the end of August 2013 — the university's account gives the reopening across 31 August–1 September — with 150 rooms: 132 guest rooms and eighteen suites, in the university's own count. It holds AAA's Four Diamond rating, and during Notre Dame's 175th anniversary year, 2017, it was admitted to Historic Hotels of America. The campus's inn is, on the record, a historic hotel in its own right — one that stands, by the boundary this section prints on every such subject, just outside the city whose name its guests use.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, Facilities and university accounts (the Morris gift; dedication May 1952; the 2012 closing; the Raclin gift; the 2013 reopening at 150 rooms).
2. Encyclopedia account of the Morris Inn (dedication April 1952; 92 rooms).
3. Historic Hotels of America (admission, 2017); AAA (Four Diamond).