A brief history of Henderson City High School

Henderson City High School existed from 1955 to 1976 in Henderson County, Kentucky. It was the fourth and last building to serve as Henderson High School. The school was called "City High" to distinguish it from Henderson County High School which had opened a year earlier. The original school was on the third floor of the city school system's first school, Center Street
School, from 1870 to 1888. The first graduating class was the class of 1872. In 1888 a new high school was built at the corner of Washington and Adams Streets. This building served as the high school until 1910 and later served as a junior high and then as Central Elementary School until 1975. The most famous graduate from this school was Admiral Husband Kimmel,
the commander at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, who was the  valedictorian of the class of 1899. From 1910 to 1955, the high school serving white students in the Henderson city limits was Barret Manual Training High School. Though the school was named Barret in honor of James Barret, who donated property for the school, all logos still used an "H" and it was
considered to be a continuation of HHS. The 1916 B.M.T.H.S. basketball team won the first state tournament at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.
That first tournament was an invitational and consisted of only eight schools. Barret is one of the few schools to win the Kentucky State Tournament with an undefeated season. This tournament was two years before the formation of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association and is not shown in the press guides. In 1927 the Henderson Gleaner and Journal held a contest to have a nickname for the athletic teams, which had never had a mascot. The winner was Purple Flash, which was submitted by Sam Levy. In 1955 the new Henderson High School was built to replace Barret, parts of which had been built as a mansion in 1860. The last location of Henderson City High School was 800 South Alves Street. That location is now the Henderson South Middle School. The mascot was changed to Flash at this time because the school colors were changed from purple and gold to red, white, and blue. Black students in the city and county attended Douglass High School. In 1965 desegregation was completed in the city school system and Douglass was merged into Henderson City High School. In 1970, Holy Name High School, a private Catholic high school, closed and the students transferred to either the City or County high schools. Due to the city school system being "landlocked" into the city limits which had existed years earlier, the tax base began to shrink as city residents began to move to subdivisions on the edge of town. The Henderson City Board of Education petitioned the Henderson County Board of education to merge. This took place in 1976 and the decision was made by the Henderson County Board of Education to have only one high school with all grade 10 through 12 students attending Henderson Senior County High School. Henderson City High School became the Henderson County Freshman Center for one year before becoming Henderson County South Middle School in 1977 following the closure of Barret Junior High School.