Pueblo County Biographies

Pueblo County, Colorado
J. LOUIS ISENBERG

Contributed by Karen Mitchell.

The subject of this sketch is a prominent architect and builder of Pueblo. His ancestors were among the early settlers of Virginia, near Yorktown, but at about the beginning of the nineteenth century they moved to the then wilderness of Central Pennsylvania, and engaged in farming upon the borders of Blair County, where young Isenberg was born November 15, 1849. At two years of age. he moved with his parents to Alexandria, Huntingdon County, Penn. He was educated in the graded public schools of that place and at Cassville Seminary (now a Soldiers' Orphan Home), at Cassville, Penn. While attending the institution above mentioned in 1864, when the Confederate army under Gen. Lee invaded Pennsylvania, young Isenberg, with two companions, deserted school and joined the State Militia at Harrisburg. After the war, he served an apprenticeship at millwrighting. In 1869, he turned his attention Westward, and emigrated to Sharon, Penn. on the extreme borders of the State. where he entered the office of an architect and remained two years. He afterward engaged in business with his father-in-law as contractors and builders, in which he was successful until 1873. The panic of that year swept away almost all Mr. Isenberg possessed. He then turned his face to the " Land of the Setting Sun," and, accompanied by his wife, arrived at Pueblo, Colo., August 7, 1873, where he located, and has since resided. He was married, at Brookfield, Ohio, December 14, 1871, to Miss Nettie T. Taylor. At Pueblo, he has continued in his line of contractor, architect and builder, and has planned and constructed a number of the important buildings in and around the city. He was the first builder in the construction of the smelting works, also the steel works. He planned and constructed the present Insane Asylum. Mr. Isenberg has always been a stanch advocate of and believer in the future greatness of the Arkansas Valley and the city of his choice—Pueblo—as his many published letters will testify, he having at various times been the correspondent of different Eastern journals and the newspapers of the city. In the spring of 1880, he was elected Alderman for the city from the Fifth Ward, and was afterward instrumental in getting the city water mains laid in his ward, much to the gratification of his constituency at that time. He now devotes his exclusive attention to building—has met with much success, and is well established among the business men of Pueblo. History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado O L Baskin & Co., Chicago, 1881

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