George Truesdell's Managasset
Perhaps no one person had as much influence on the development of Kalorama Triangle as did George Truesdell. Truesdell was born in 1842 in Fairmount, New York, and was a Civil War veteran, having been commissioned as a major and paymaster in the army. Before arriving in Washington in 1872, he had worked as a civil engineer in New Jersey. Upon his arrival in Washington, Truesdell immediately started buying and selling land. In the 1880s, he bought fifteen acres of land in Kalorama Triangle.
On part of his land fronting on Columbia Road, Truesdell built his less-than-modest summer home, Managasset. He subdivided the remaining part of the land in 1887 as Truesdell’s Addition to Washington Heights. A year after creating the subdivision, he organized the District’s first electric streetcar railway, the Eckington and Soldiers’ Home Railway Company. The city’s second electric railway, the Rock Creek Railway, was chartered only a month later, with Truesd…
