Montgomery Blair High School - Campus

Campus

The current campus of Montgomery Blair High School covers forty-two acres between the Capital Beltway, U.S. Route 29, and Maryland Route 193 in Silver Spring's Four Corners neighborhood. As such, the school's campus is approximately triangular with the side bordered by the Capital Beltway being the longest. The school contains 386,567 sq ft (35,913.2 m2) of space and was originally designed for 2,830 students. Only eight school years after its completion, the school was more than 500 students over capacity, with a population of about 3,400. As a result, the school at one point had eight auxiliary portable classrooms. Over the past few years, population has decreased slightly due to the opening of other schools and the Downcounty Consortium, and as a result 2 portables were removed at the beginning of the 2006–2007 school year. As of April 2010, the enrollment at Blair is 2,788, and the portable classrooms have been removed. Still, Blair remains the county's largest school.

The school has baseball and softball fields to the east of the main building as well as Blazer Stadium which serves as the home of the school's football, soccer, and lacrosse teams. Silver Spring Fire Station 16 conveniently lies adjacent to the baseball field. Residing between the baseball field and the Capital Beltway are two ponds, occasionally visited by marine biology classes for observation and field experience. A large auxiliary field resides south of the main building, adjacent to the Capital Beltway. To the southwest of the building are three basketball and eight-and-a-half tennis courts, as well as a 400-meter track, which encloses another field, home to the field hockey team. Marvin Memorial United Methodist Church lies at the edge of the campus, just beyond eastbound University Boulevard, and is used as an AP testing facility. The school has three main parking lots, one for over 40 busses, one reserved for students, and another reserved for both faculty members and visitors. There are three courtyards located throughout the main building; the main one is located to the east of the building and opens out to the rest of the outdoor space. The other two courtyards are located within the school building and therefore are surrounded by walls on all four sides. Traditionally, the central courtyard is reserved for the seniors and the west one for the faculty members, especially during lunch periods. A greenhouse and accompanying patio is located on the second floor on the west side of the main building for the use of horticulture classes. One of Montgomery Blair's more recent additions came in March 2006, when the school's astronomy class added a sundial to the east courtyard. In the spring of 2008, members of the Science, Math, and Computer Science Magnet Program installed a 10-ring labyrinth in the northwest corner of the campus, in honor of the late former Magnet Earth system science teacher, Mr. Rogers.

The school building contains a 750-seat auditorium, but it has not received as much acclaim from the community as the aged, 1,200-seat Elizabeth Stickley Auditorium at Blair's old Wayne Avenue campus. The school also has various computer, science, and engineering labs, media production facilities, and standard classrooms and academic facilities. However, instead of a typical cafeteria, Blair has a Student Activities Center (SAC) which serves as the lunchroom as well as a main site of Blair events. Connecting the auditorium and SAC, which are on two ends of the building, is a large, unique, three-story corridor dubbed Blair Boulevard. The Blair Library (Media Center), school store, and bank (The Vault) also reside on Blair Boulevard. Another hallway is named after Sligo Creek because it snakes through the building, much like its namesake. All other hallways in the building are given similar street names, but are seldom referred to as such, because they are also numbered by level.

Perhaps one of the building's most unusual features is its vibrant color scheme, which include various shades of red and green throughout the school. The SAC contains numerous shades as well as a mural depicting both the Wayne Avenue and Four Corners campuses. The ceiling of Blair Boulevard is not a standard white, but "cilantro" or "poseidon" according to the administration. The front wall of each classroom is painted in a light color while the other walls are white. According to staff, the school's designers came up with its color scheme based on research on how directed color affected learning. The main hallway of the school, 'Blair Boulevard" displays flags from many countries, representing its extremely diverse student body.