When Saginaw newcomer Stephanie Braley took a wrong turn in 2007, the sight of a  beautiful but empty house stopped her in the middle of a busy road. Now she and her husband Thomas Braley, a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch, live in the two-story, 19-room Greek Revival  along with their four children. 

And it wasn’t just any old house that caught her eye either. It is an historic and well-known one. 

It is  The Brockway House. 

Standing on nearly an acre of land at 1631 Brockway, both the street and the house are named after lumberman Abel A. Brockway. In 1865, as the nation waged its bloody war between the North and the South, Brockway built a small two-story farm house on the property.  Brockway was a heavy stockholder in the Tittabawassee Boom Company, and the street at that time was named Cross Road. 

In the decades since, numerous owners have added on to the structure and remodeled it as well. Chiefly, those four towering, wooden, fluted Corinthian columns that are today such a dominate feature were added in 1919. They were purchased from Dr. Florentine's Hospital for Women, 507 S. Washington, when it was demolished. At the same time, the then-owner erected  the first white fence to surround the property. 

Today The Brockway House contains 5,200 square feet of living space, and since moving in June of 2008 the Braleys have had their work cut out for them. 

“All the ornate fixtures were gone, ripped out,” says Stephanie Braley. “The light fixtures, glass door knobs, furniture -- gone. We bought 48 new windows because at least half of them were broken. The house had sat empty for 2 1/2 years before we bought it.

“It took two months to get all the old wallpaper off to see what was underneath. And we found a fireplace in the living room that was covered over. I stripped all the floors and we’ve painted two-thirds of the house.” 

Since moving in, the Braleys also have extensively landscaped the lawn. 

Today the Brockway House contains six bedrooms, five bathrooms, dining room, kitchen, grand room, living room, family room, office, game room and one large catch-all room over the garage. It features pine floors, walk in closets and built-in shelves. 

“We would like to furnish it to a period dating from the late 1800s to the early 1900s,” says Tom Braley. “Both of us have a sense of history, a love of history. But it will be a long process, and we’ll be able to do more when the kids (ages 16, 11, 9 and 3) go off to college.

“This is a lot of house.” 

They also would like to solve the heating issue. When it’s 75 degrees upstairs, it’s 68 degrees downstairs. 

Stephanie Braley says they were told the house is haunted. 

“Sometimes we hear sounds like people walking down the stairs and I swear once I saw a figure,” she says. “And then there was the sound of a kid crying in the back the house. Who knows. It may just be the sounds a big, old house makes, or ......”