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On the western side of the place, along State Road 933, stands the community that makes Notre Dame something more than a dormitory with a post office: Holy Cross Village at Notre Dame, a nonprofit continuing-care retirement community — independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing on one campus — founded by the Brothers of Holy Cross and still operated under their sponsorship. It is the place's second population: the old, living deliberately beside the young, on ground the brothers have held since the 1960s.
The ground came first, as it always does here. The Brothers of Holy Cross — the teaching brotherhood of the same congregation whose priests founded the university — built up their own campus on the west side of the Dixie Way beginning in the mid-1960s: the brothers' provincial center rose in 1966, Holy Cross College began there the same year, and the brothers' own care buildings followed the province's need — Dujarie House, the brothers' infirmary and nursing home, whose original building a federal health survey dates to 1964, with wings added in 1980 and 1985. For decades this was care for brothers only. The Village, as a community open to lay residents, is the later, deliberate act: in the mid-1990s the Midwest Province, under its provincial Brother William Geenen — the founder of the Senior Friendship Centers in Florida and, in the brothers' own jubilee literature, the founder of Holy Cross Village — took up the plan, in the province newsletter's words, "to build a neighborhood for laypeople" that would answer the aging brothers' needs and the region's at once. The community's present leadership tells the founding the same way: Holy Cross Village was founded by the Brothers of Holy Cross in the late 1990s to serve adults 65 and older.
The founding year is printed as the record gives it, because the record gives it in layers that do not quite coincide. The South Bend Tribune, reporting the Village's expansion in March 2026, quotes an original resident who "has been there since the facility opened in 1997," and its president saying the Village will be "nearing 30 years as a nonprofit in 2028" — which arithmetic puts the nonprofit's start at about 1998. The Indiana Board of Tax Review's record of the Village's exemption case preserves the formal paper: restated articles of incorporation of Holy Cross Village at Notre Dame, Inc. dated 1 October 2000, operating a village whose residential buildings stand on a tract of 38.62 acres, with the brothers' corporation owning the land and the Village corporation operating it. Founding, opening and incorporation are three different acts spread across 1997–2000, and the sources each fasten on a different one; all three are printed, and none is silently chosen. What is not in doubt is the founder (the Brothers of Holy Cross, Midwest Province, under Brother William Geenen), the model (a faith-based, nonprofit, continuing-care neighborhood, welcoming residents of all beliefs), or the address: 54515 State Road 933 North, Notre Dame, IN 46556.
Its true size is a village's, not an institution's. The brothers' province newsletter, a decade into the Village's life, measured the growth on the brothers' campus this way: from 22 nursing beds for brothers in Dujarie House in 1965, on 38 acres, the campus had grown by 2015 to 175 individuals living in 152 independent apartments at Holy Cross Village, with 46 beds in assisted living at Schubert Villa and 46 in the nursing house — and an expansion then in train (a 96-unit independent-living building, 30 more assisted-living rooms and a memory-care wing in the 2007-era building program) was to bring capacity past 350 elders. Later directory descriptions put the grounds at about 40 acres, with villas, apartment buildings under names like Andre Place and Riverside Place, a chapel, and the full care continuum on site; the skilled-nursing component is a small facility of about 50 beds in the federal survey record. In February 2026 the Village announced another expansion — 14 new townhomes and 30 apartments, with groundbreaking planned that summer and completion within about eighteen months — and in November 2026 that is its present state: a community of a few hundred older residents, growing modestly, on roughly forty acres at the place's western edge. Its residents are the reason the CDP's "65 and over" share, tiny as it is against the dormitory thousands, is not zero — and they are counted, like the students, exactly where they live.
Sources: Brothers of Holy Cross, Midwest Province newsletter, March 2015 (provincial center 1966; Dujarie House 22 beds in 1965 on 38 acres; 175 individuals in 152 independent apartments in 2015; Schubert Villa 46 assisted-living beds). U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Engaging Aging, Winter 2022 (Brother William Geenen's provincial planning, winter 1995–96; design of a neighborhood for laypeople). Brothers' jubilee newsletter, June 2009 (Geenen as founder of the Senior Friendship Centers and of Holy Cross Village). Indiana Board of Tax Review, Brothers of Holy Cross, Inc., final determination, 7 June 2005 (Village tract of 38.62 acres; Holy Cross Village at Notre Dame, Inc. restated articles dated 1 Oct. 2000; Riverside Place, Dujarie House, Schubert Villa). South Bend Tribune, 18 Mar. 2026 (resident there "since the facility opened in 1997"; "nearing 30 years as a nonprofit in 2028"; 14 townhomes and 30 apartments planned; Feb. 24 launch). Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services survey record via Indiana Department of Health (54515 State Road 933 North; original building 1964; capacity about 50). Holy Cross Village segment, HomeTown Living, Aug. 2026 (founded by the Brothers of Holy Cross in the late 1990s for adults 65 and older).