Akron barber George Isenman measured time with snips of scissors and scrapes of razors. For nearly 70 years, he operated a popular shop at Main and Market streets.
Among his famous customers were President William McKinley, inventor Thomas Edison, Wild West star Buffalo Bill Cody and heavyweight boxing champion John L. Sullivan.
As the city’s oldest barber in the late 1930s, Isenman groomed four generations of customers. His loyal clientele included the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his original patrons from the late 19th century.
Born in Germany, Isenman was 17 years old when he arrived by canalboat July 1, 1871, in Akron, a muddy village of 10,000. He was already an expert barber, having practiced the trade for nine years in his father’s shop in Europe.
Isenman landed a job at Jacob Orth’s barbershop below George Weimer’s drugstore on East Market Street near the Academy of Music. The young immigrant couldn’t imagine that he would spend the rest of his long career within walking distance of that building.
“The streets were unpaved and lined with hitching posts and watering troughs,” Isenman recalled decades later. “Livery stables were doing a big business and boats were running in the two canals. It was the days of the old town when saloons were on most every corner and women never went to a barbershop.”
After a few years, Isenman took over the shop in the Empire House, a hotel at the northwest corner of Main and Market streets. Charging 20 cents for haircuts and 10 cents for shaves, Isenman stocked his shelves with powders, lotions and creams. There was no set time for closing. As long as people roamed the streets at night, the barbershop stayed open.
“In many ways it was the most interesting place in all the town,” Akron historian John A. Botzum, a customer since childhood, reminisced in a 1929 article in the Akron Times-Press. “A bath in that old shop was another luxury not to be forgotten. No one will ever forget the literature that was piled around on the tables down there. Surely we can’t forget the Police Gazettes and some of the things we heard. The smell of the perfumes and various kinds of tonic also remain with us.”
Distinguished guests at the Empire, such as McKinley, Edison, Cody and Sullivan, stopped for haircuts and shaves. Many prominent Akron men were regular customers, including Ferdinand Schumacher, Ohio C. Barber, Lewis Miller, Samuel A. Lane, George W. Crouse, Col. Arthur Latham Conger, Jacob Koch, Edwin C. Shaw, William G. Robinson, David L. King and J. Edward Good.
“The town was different from what it is now and the people were different,” Isenman recalled. “It appears to me they were more sociable. There were few strangers then and no one was in a hurry. We just moved along from one day to another.”
In 1880, Isenman married Amanda Good, whose father, Jacob Good, operated a grocery store on East Market Street. The couple welcomed two daughters, Katherine and Laura, and lived 40 years on Good Street before moving to Grand Avenue near Highland Square.
The barber waited on every Akron mayor from the 1870s through the 1930s except for C. Nelson Sparks, a grumpy one-termer from 1932-1934. In an Akron Times-Press interview, Isenman offered recollections of notable customers from the city’s past.
On Col. Simon Perkins: “Yes, sir, I often trimmed his long beard. He wore long hair and I have often trimmed it up for him so that he might go to church.”
On hotelier Julius Sumner: “He was the most striking character of the old town. He had a long white beard and wore his hair long. He looked like a biblical character or a man from the great Western plains. Often I trimmed his long beard but he never would allow the shears to be used on his head of hair.”
On U.S. Sen. Charles Dick: “In the old shop, we had a little round chair for children. Boys got their hair cut for 15 cents. The first time Charlie Dick came in, his father took him over to the 15-cent chair and Charlie climbed in.”
On Gen. Lucius V. Bierce: “He was a very eccentric man. He wanted to be different from other men and he was. One of this peculiarities was to go around in the wintertime wearing a straw hat and slippers.”
On store owner Philander D. Hall: “P.D. Hall was another peculiar fellow. He never wore shoes that were mates and his wig must have been a hundred years old.”
In a 1934 interview with Beacon Journal reporter Jack Knox, Isenman said he followed the wishes of customers and rarely engaged in long discussions.
“When a man like E.C. Shaw or Colonel Perkins, men with a lot on their minds, came in, I said no more than ‘How do you do?’ ” he recalled. “I never talked much. I couldn’t work well if I did. I never entered into conversation with strangers.”
Isenman worked for three decades at the Empire House. After it was torn down in the early 20th century, he opened a barbershop in the building that replaced it, the 250-room Portage Hotel, which premiered in 1912 on the corner where SummaCare stands today. Late in his career, Isenman changed corners again, moving to a shop in the Orpheum Arcade, where the federal building is now.
Other barbers came and went, but Isenman remained. His real competition was the growing popularity of the safety razor. Too many men were shaving themselves.
“Why, I bet there are days go by when I don’t shave a man,” he fumed.
He watched as a canal village transformed into an industrial city of 355,000 people. Horse-drawn wagons gave way to streetcars and automobiles. Blimps, dirigibles and airplanes flew across a rapidly changing skyline. And women became customers at the barbershop.
George Isenman worked for 67 years at Main and Market. When he died Dec. 3, 1938, at age 84, he was the city’s oldest barber and one of the oldest in the nation. His death was reported in newspapers around the country.
“I’ve seen Akron grow from a country town to a city of a quarter million inhabitants,” Isenman told Beacon Journal columnist H.B. “Doc” Kerr in 1936. “If I had my life to live over gain, I wouldn’t change a day of it.”
Copy editor Mark J. Price is author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.