Henry Clay High School: Lexington's Oldest Public High School

Henry Clay High School is the oldest public high school in Lexington, with roots that stretch back to 1834. Today the Blue Devils serve roughly 2,000 students at the Fontaine Road campus, with a deep tradition in academics, athletics, and a state-championship Speech and Debate program. This guide covers the school's history, current stats, programs, athletics, and which Lexington neighborhoods feed into it.

If you're researching FCPS more broadly, start with the Lexington Schools Guide for the district overview. If you're researching a specific neighborhood and wondering where Henry Clay sits in your school pipeline, several of the neighborhood pages on this site reference Henry Clay as the zoned high school.

Quick Facts

• Address: 2100 Fontaine Road, Lexington, KY 40502
• District: Fayette County Public Schools
• Established: 1928 (as Henry Clay High School)
• Predecessor lineage: Morton School (1834), Morton High School (1904), Lexington High School (1918)
• Current facility opened: 1970 (renovated 2006)
• Mascot: Blue Devils
• Colors: Blue and Gold
• Principal: Tony Blackman
• Enrollment: Roughly 1,990 students (most recent FTE)
• Student-teacher ratio: Roughly 16.5 to 1
• U.S. News 2025-26 Kentucky ranking: #30
• Website: henryclay.fcps.net

History: From Morton School to Henry Clay

Henry Clay High School's story actually starts almost a century before the school took its current name.

In 1834, the first public school in Lexington opened. It was a four-room building sponsored by William Morton, and it was simply called the Morton School. For seventy years, secondary education in Lexington was patchwork: courses ended at eighth grade in most schools, with only two of the city schools (Dudley and Johnson) offering two additional years of high school coursework.

In 1904, that changed. The first four-year high school in Lexington opened in the old Morton School building at the corner of Short and Walnut Streets. It was named Morton High School. Population growth meant a new building was needed, and in 1908 a larger facility was built on the same site. By 1916, demand had outgrown that building too. A $400,000 bond was issued for new construction.

In 1918, the school moved to a new building at the corner of Fourth and Limestone Streets and was renamed Lexington High School. The old building became Morton Junior High School.

In 1928, the school moved again, this time to a new building on Main Street, and adopted its current name: Henry Clay High School, in honor of Kentucky statesman Henry Clay. That Main Street building stood as Henry Clay High School for over four decades. Today it still stands, but it serves a different purpose: it houses the FCPS district administrative offices and is known as the Guy S. Potts Building at 701 East Main Street, named for the superintendent who served from 1961 to 1984.

In 1970, Henry Clay High School moved to its current facility at 2100 Fontaine Road, where it has remained ever since. The Fontaine Road campus underwent a complete renovation in 2006.

The Name: Who Was Henry Clay?

The school is named after Henry Clay (1777-1852), one of the most important political figures in U.S. history. Clay represented Kentucky in both the U.S. House and Senate, served three times as Speaker of the House, ran for President five times (and lost five times), earning the nickname "The Great Compromiser" for his work brokering deals between North and South in the pre-Civil War era.

Clay's Lexington home, the Ashland estate, sits in the Ashland Park neighborhood just two miles east of downtown. The estate was the original 600-acre property that gave Ashland Park its name. Henry Clay's main house at Ashland was rebuilt in 1854-1856 by Lexington architect Thomas Lewinski, the same architect who designed the Bell House in Bell Court. So the high school, the Ashland estate, the Ashland Park neighborhood, and the Bell Court neighborhood all share threads of the same Lexington story.

Programs and Academics

Henry Clay offers a broad slate of academic programs typical of a comprehensive public high school plus several distinctive offerings:

• Advanced Placement (AP): Roughly 43% AP participation rate, with a wide selection of AP courses across subjects.
• Army JROTC: One of the major JROTC programs in Fayette County (the other is the Air Force JROTC at Bryan Station).
• Speech and Debate: A genuinely elite program (see below).
• Drama, music, and visual arts.

The Speech and Debate Dynasty

If you take one thing away about Henry Clay, this might be it: the Speech and Debate team has won the Kentucky State championship 13 times. Most years recently. The titles came in 1991, 1992, 2007, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. That's a real dynasty by any reasonable measure, and the kind of program that distinguishes a school for college admissions and student development beyond what test scores capture.

Athletics

The Henry Clay Blue Devils field varsity teams in most major sports plus several club sports (hockey, ultimate frisbee, boys' volleyball, lacrosse). Archery was added as a varsity sport in 2012-13. The Blue Devil Marching Band performs at home football games and competes regionally.

Recent athletic highlights:

• Boys soccer state championship (2020). Senior forward Sota Ippongi was named Gatorade Kentucky Boys Soccer Player of the Year that season. He scored 26 goals and 10 assists, including 10 goals in seven postseason matches.
• 2024 boys soccer: Henry Clay won the 42nd District and 11th Region championships and reached the state semifinals. Senior forward Marco Messerli was named the Lexington Herald-Leader's All-City Boys Soccer Player of the Year.

Athletic rivalries follow the traditional Fayette County circuit: Henry Clay competes against Lafayette, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Bryan Station, Tates Creek, and Frederick Douglass throughout the year.

Which Neighborhoods Feed Into Henry Clay

Henry Clay serves a large portion of east Lexington. Specific zoning depends on your exact street address, but the following neighborhoods are partially or fully zoned for Henry Clay:

• Bell Court: Henry Clay is the zoned high school for this small historic district just southeast of downtown.
• Chevy Chase: Both the northwest and central/south sections of Chevy Chase feed into Henry Clay (with Ashland Elementary or Cassidy Elementary as the elementary feeders).
• Ashland Park: The historic Olmsted-designed neighborhood where Henry Clay's actual Ashland estate sits. Ashland Park, Ashland Elementary, Morton Middle, Henry Clay High is the standard pipeline.
• Idle Hour: The post-WWII neighborhood off Richmond Road feeds into Henry Clay via Breckinridge Elementary and Morton Middle.
• Andover: Some of the Andover-area subdivisions feed Henry Clay. Others feed elsewhere depending on the specific subdivision.
• Parts of Hamburg: Most Hamburg now feeds Frederick Douglass High (the newer school built partly to relieve overcrowding at Henry Clay), but some peripheral areas may still feed Henry Clay.

Because boundary lines can change with rezonings, always verify your specific address with the FCPS SchoolSite Locator.

How to Learn More

To verify your specific address is zoned for Henry Clay, use the FCPS SchoolSite Locator.

For current programs, teachers, and recent news, visit the school website at henryclay.fcps.net.

For the broader district context, see the Lexington Schools Guide.

For other individual school pages, see Frederick Douglass High School and Bryan Station High School. More school pages will be added to this site over time.

For neighborhood research with Henry Clay zoning, the neighborhoods section of this site has detail on Bell Court, Chevy Chase, Ashland Park, Idle Hour, Andover, and Hamburg.