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1907–2023 · 3016 PORTAGE AVENUE, SOUTH BEND (BOUNDARY — THE COUNTY HOME OF PENN'S OWN ADMISSIONS)
The poorhouse of art-57-1 had exactly the second life the row describes, on the same ground. The St. Joseph County Infirmary at 3016 Portage Avenue — 113.8 acres bought in 1905, opened 4 April 1907 — was renamed the St. Joseph County Home under the 1947 state-law changes, licensed in 1966 for 108 residential beds and 12 comprehensive nursing-care beds, renamed Portage Manor in the 1980s after eighteen months of renovations (1989), and run thereafter as the county home for adults with disabilities, mental illness and low-income elderly residents — a public residence for the mentally ill in the poorhouse's own building, capacity 144 in its last form. In 1992 Portage Manor established a formal working relationship with the local CMHC, Madison Center (art-57-6) — the county home and the community centre formally linked. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 (the St. Joseph County Infirmary, NRHP ref. 00000670; main building built 1906, Classical Revival).
Present state, dated: there is none as a residence. In February 2023 the Board of Commissioners announced the facility would shut down completely, after an earlier plan to move residents to a new facility was abandoned as too expensive; residents faced a 31 July 2023 move-out deadline, four residents sued to block the closure temporarily, and Portage Manor officially closed at the end of July / beginning of August 2023 — one long resident, Randy Nowak, had lived there more than three decades; the longest-term resident in the home's whole record had stayed 58 years (1933–1991). As of 2024 the closed building was reported permanently closed and slated to be destroyed. Two tellings of the end print whole: the county's (cost; an unaffordable replacement) and the residents' (a stable, secure home on 100-plus acres, lost) — neither is merged into the other. On Osceola's ground itself no poorhouse reuse ever stood: the county home was always county-seated, and Penn's share was admissions, as art-57-1 prints.
Sources: St. Joseph County Home timeline (sjcindiana.gov); Portage Manor landmark staff report (2020); National Register listing 00000670; South Bend Tribune reporting carried by Notre Dame Insider (4 Aug. 2023, updated 8 Aug. 2023) on the February 2023 closure decision, the 31 July 2023 deadline and the residents' suit.