Southwest High School - Roundup Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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SEEING SOUTHWEST HIGH SCHOOL By JANE JACKSON Viewing Southwest High School from Kingshighway Boulevard, you see, standing out clear and distinct, its walls of red, sandstruck colonial brick rising sharp and unrelieved against the pale blue background of the sky. The building itself, built to accommodate 1300 pupils, is decidedly square, and has no elaborate ornamentations. It consists of three stories with a fourth floor in the center. Between the building and Kingshighway lie the quarter- mile cinder track and the football and baseball practice lields. A closer view of the school discloses the symbolic figures which rest domi- natingly over the entrance. As a whole they represent Youthful Leader- ship : but, individually, they are interpreted as follows: Exact Sciences, Social Interests , Youthful Leadership , The Liberal Arts , and Athletic Activities . These statutes were sculptured by Fred Morie of St. Louis. Having entered the school by way of the main doors and having ascended a flight of marble stairs, you find yourself in the main lobby from which extend three halls to the south, the west, and the north. The modernistic architecture strikes your eye immediately. Indirect lighting prevails throughout the school, Twenty-one

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These dictators realize that they can exist, as dictators, only so long as they can force the mass of people to think, not their own thoughts, but the thoughts of the dictator. Why do Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin have thou- sands of plain clothes men policing their respective countries? Not to protect the people, but to see that nothing is said or done which qoes not conform to their own ideas. Imagine one man, or a small group of men at the most, trying to direct the thoughts of every single person in that country: telling them what to wear, Where to work, how large a family to have, what to read, what to eat, what they may say, how they may worship, and what they may think! Since a dictatorship is entirely different from our American plan of govern- ment, it is difficult to see how some professed Americans can entertain the idea of a dictator in America. They are willing to give up their liberty, free- dom, and rights of Englishmen, for what? The American people must reflect so that they will appreciate just what a dictatorship means, and just what a democracy means. They must be made to realize the value of their great heritage. And we, as the citizens of tomorrow, must consecrate ourselves to liberty and to democracy. Twenty

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aided, wherever possible, by broad horizontal windows made of ultra-modern glass bricks. These illuminate the stairways and are also used for sky-lighting in the gymnasium, locker rooms, and art rooms. The floors of the lobby, as of almost all the school, are made of a special kind of cork which is not only noiseless but resilient and is not tiring to the feet. The Walls of the lobby are of dull-faced tile. The entrance to the auditorium is in the hall West from the lobby. The auditorium itself seats 1383 persons. The windows are located at the top of both sides of the auditorium. For motion pictures and other activities which require the darkening of the auditorium, electrically operated shades are lowered over these windows. The lower part of the Walls is paneled with dark oak, Plaster, ranging in color from a delicate pink tint to the deep rose color which furnishes the trimming, has been surmounted on this, giving the walls a dis- Twenty-two ,