From the grounds of the station, Blair looked like a great battlement guarding the western approach to the university.

For all of Blair's architectural significance as Princeton's archetypal Collegiate Gothic building, it is actually modeled after an earlier Cope and Stewardson design, Rockefeller Hall at Bryn Mawr. Built in 1896, Rockefeller Hall was not as large as Blair, but the details of the towers were almost identical. Blair's commanding site, however, made it more dramatic than its predecessor.