Wilde Lake High School

Wilde Lake High School is a secondary school located in Columbia, Maryland's Village of Wilde Lake, one of 12 public high schools in Howard County.Bids were requested by January 1970 for a 1,350-seat school to be built for an estimated $2.6 million. Opened in 1971 as a model school for the nation, it was Columbia's first high school. It had an open doughnut-shaped design with "open classrooms" and was a model school for new teaching settings.In 1994, the original 910-student building which did not meet current safety standards was demolished. A new $20 million 1,200-seat building with a more traditional style was reconstructed on the same site by Cochran, Stephenson and Donkevoet. The new building, opened in 1996, replicates the open idea, with a central main street, and halls surrounding it and a bridge across the second floor.The school is centrally located in Howard County and its district borders that of River Hill High School, Marriotts Ridge High School, Centennial High School, Howard High School, Oakland Mills High School, and Atholton High School.Jim Rouse TheatreWilde Lake has a modern 750-seat theater named for Columbia founder James Rouse, who went by "Jim". The theatre has its own separate entrance and is used by both school and community groups. The 12,500-square-foot performance space is also used for community meetings, sales rallies, exhibitions, and business training sessions. The theatre has a total of 739 seats and eight handicapped accessible locations.