Phenix High School was a school for African American students which was opened on the campus of the normal school which grew to become today's Hampton University near the town of Hampton and Fort Monroe in Elizabeth City County, Virginia in the period immediately following the conclusion of the American Civil War.
Phenix High School, first established in 1931, was named for George Perly Phenix (1864–1930), a native of Maine. Dr. Phenix who was the first administrator to hold the title of "president" of the university .[1] A popular administrator, Dr. Phenix died suddenly in a drowning accident a few months before the new school he had championed opened.[2]
The original building survives as became Phenix Hall on the University's campus after it was replaced in 1958 with a newer building off campus which was affiliated with the Hampton City Public Schools system. In 1968, during reorganization to accomplish desegregation of the division's public schools, the second Phenix High School was renamed Pembroke High School. That building was closed in 1980, and the building now houses the Hampton Family YMCA and social services offices of the Hampton city government.
A third school bearing the name "Phenix" was under construction in 2010.