John A. Nordstrum High School was built in 1915 and began its first semester in September 1916, although the desks had yet to arrive. They were still within a railroad boxcar that had been lost within Detroit's vast railyards. But it was overcrowded within a few years so Southwestern High School was built beside it, with the recent high school to become an intermediate school. Southwestern was designed with a gymnasium, swimming pool, extensive track and field space, and an auditorium. It was one of the first schools developed following Michigan's enactment of statutes requiring mandatory attendance at high school. The students of adjoining Nordstrum attended the dedication of Southwestern in April 1922, and began using the building immediately, although the first regular classes began in September 1922. The January 1923 yearbook was called the Sou'wester. The growth in Detroit's student population was so rapid, Nordstrom simply became a wing of Southwestern used mainly by ninth and tenth grade students, with the most advanced classes held in the newer building. In a period prior to 1955, Southwestern was one of the schools serving high school students from the Allen Park School District. That year, Allen Park High School in Allen Park opened. In the 1980s Guam-born Manny Crisostomo, working for the Detroit Free Press, received permission from the DPS superintendent to photograph the inside of the school, including the students. He took photographs for 40 weeks, and based on these photographs he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize Feature Photography Award. Chadsey High School closed in 2009 and its neighborhoods became part of the Southwestern zone. Population decline continued in Detroit, and specifically in the quantity of schoolchildren in neighborhoods served by Southwestern High School. For several years the district considered closing Southwestern. Robert Bobb, who served as the Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, had almost closed Southwestern. By February 2012 the school district announced that it had plans to close Southwestern at the end of the school year. Several protesters challenged the school closing proposal. Aaron Foley of MLive said that the protesters were concerned about a loss of bilingual education employees and fears of a rivalry with students at Western International High School. The school closed in June 2012. Its neighborhoods were apportioned between Northwestern High School and Western International for summer school and the start of the fall semester in September 2012. The school's contents were auctioned using the internet in October 2012. DPS officials said that making the sale online would save $85,000 of school funds. By 2014 scrappers and vandals had attacked the closed Southwestern campus.
Campus
The campus has of space. In 2002 a replacement pool was built for $1.25 million.
Curriculum
As of 2000 the school offered training programs in business-oriented technical skills and by that year it included a computer-assisted design computer center. Students were able to take internship and work and school cooperative programs. In 2000 the school did not offer skilled manufacturing and trade courses. These courses were offered at five different technical centers in Detroit, and interested students would arrive to their regular school early and board buses bound for a technical center. That year the technical schools had limited numbers of recruitment information available in Spanish, the primary language of many students at Southwestern.
