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Notre Dame exists twice. It exists on the ground, where anyone can see it: three college campuses, a post office, two small lakes and a river edge, packed into a little over a square mile immediately north of South Bend. And it exists on paper, in the files of two federal agencies, as a named statistical area — because the government that counts it is not a government that rules it. The place has no mayor, no council, no town board, no municipal boundary in law. What it has is a census-designated place: a boundary drawn by the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with local officials, purely so that a closely settled, locally recognized, unincorporated community can be counted as a unit. A CDP is the statistical equivalent of a city with everything except the city removed — no legally defined municipal corporation, no functioning local government of its own, and a boundary that exists for data collection and tabulation, in the Census Bureau's own formula on its 2020 block map for this place, and for no other purpose.
The identifiers are exact, and they are worth printing exactly, because they are nearly the whole of the place's official existence. In the federal geographic system the place is Indiana place code 55386, carried in full FIPS form as 1855386 — state 18, place 55386 — the code the Census Bureau's QuickFacts page prints for Notre Dame CDP, Indiana. In the U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System the populated place carries GNIS feature ID 2583462, the identifier under which the national gazetteer files the name "Notre Dame" in St. Joseph County. One secondary gazetteer profile also carries the Census class code U2 for the place, glossed in that profile as a census designated place without an officially federally recognized name of its own — a precise, if unromantic, description of a place whose name is borrowed from the institution that fills it. The 2020 census block map for the place (one sheet, geography vintage 2020, boundaries as of 1 January 2020, MAF/TIGER database) frames the whole CDP between about 41.6911° and 41.7111° north latitude and 86.2246° and 86.2514° west longitude. Published coordinate points for the place differ by source and by what they measure: the GNIS-cited point stands at 41.70139° N, 86.24583° W, and a GNIS-derived profile gives a primary point at 41.7013° N, 86.2379° W — two points inside the same small polygon, a few hundred yards apart, printed here as the carriers give them rather than averaged into a false precision.
The measured frame is small. The Census Bureau's 2020 Gazetteer files, as returned with the Bureau's published data, give the CDP a total area of 1.25 square miles (3.23 km²), of which 1.18 square miles (3.06 km²) is land and 0.066 square miles (0.17 km²) is water — the water being, in the main, the two lakes, St. Mary and St. Joseph, and the river edge described in the taking article below. QuickFacts carries the land area as 1.18 square miles for 2020 against 1.21 for 2010, a reminder that even the frame moves slightly between censuses as the Bureau re-delineates. The boundary is split between two civil townships, Clay and Portage — the split is measured in the taking article by the survey lines that carry it — and the place sits inside a single census tract's worth of ground, tract 112.03 in the county's numbering as the block map prints it, with the township codes Clay 13222 and Portage 61128 flanking it on the same sheet.
The population course is a college's course, and it must be read as one. The decennial counts the Bureau publishes in QuickFacts are 5,973 on 1 April 2010 and 7,234 on 1 April 2020 — a rise of 1,261 people, or 21.1 percent, at a 2020 density of 6,120.1 persons per square mile of land. A longer series compiled from Census Bureau data with later figures rebased from census blocks gives 7,011 in 1990 and 6,887 in 2000 before the 2010 dip; that series is printed here as a compiled series, not as the Bureau's headline table, and the one figure that circulates widely for this place and is not the 2020 decennial count — 6,342, still attached to "2020" in an older simplified reference — is rejected: the decennial census of 1 April 2020 counted 7,234, and no other number is the census.
What kind of population is it? The American Community Survey's 2020–2024 five-year figures for the CDP, as the Bureau publishes them in QuickFacts, answer with unusual clarity. Persons under 18 are 0.7 percent of the place; persons 65 and over are 1.1 percent; the owner-occupied housing rate is 4.3 percent; and the whole place contains 232 households, averaging 1.74 persons — in a place whose ACS population in the same release stands near 6,900. Arithmetic does the rest: a population of thousands carried on a household base of hundreds is a population that lives, overwhelmingly, not in households at all but in group quarters — and the group quarters of this place are college dormitories. The census counts students where they live on census day, and where most of Notre Dame's counted people live is in residence halls at the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's College and Holy Cross College. The swings in the decennial line — down to 5,973 in 2010, up to 7,234 in 2020 — are therefore not a town growing or shrinking in the ordinary way; they are the shape of dormitory capacity, enrollment, and who was in residence on the first of April. The median household income the ACS reports, $19,886, and the per-capita income of $7,397, with a poverty rate of 49.2 percent, are the same fact wearing statistical dress: they are what a place looks like when most of its "residents" are students with dormitory addresses and little personal income. Printed exactly, the census of Notre Dame is the census of a college that happens to have its own place-name.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts — Notre Dame CDP, Indiana (population 1 Apr. 2020: 7,234; 1 Apr. 2010: 5,973; land area 2020: 1.18 sq mi, 2010: 1.21; density 2020: 6,120.1/sq mi; FIPS 1855386; ACS 2020–2024: under 18, 0.7%; 65 and over, 1.1%; owner-occupied rate 4.3%; households 232; median household income $19,886; per-capita income $7,397; poverty 49.2%). U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 U.S. Gazetteer Files, as returned (total 1.25 sq mi; land 1.18; water 0.066). U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Block Map: Notre Dame CDP, IN (place 55386; tract 112.03; Clay twp 13222, Portage twp 61128; frame 41.6911–41.7111 N, 86.2246–86.2514 W; boundaries for statistical purposes only). U.S. Geological Survey, GNIS: Notre Dame, Indiana, feature ID 2583462; coordinate points as cited in text. CityPopulation.de compilation from Census Bureau data (1990: 7,011; 2000: 6,887; rebased series).