Saginaw — Just steps from the Saginaw River, a red-brick mansion stands alone in an industrial wasteland.
For decades, locals knew it as the “Cat Lady’s House.” Today, it is once again known by its original name: the Lee Mansion.
Built during the height of Michigan’s lumber boom, the house now stands as one of rural Michigan’s most successful preservation efforts.
A Lumber Baron’s Bet on Saginaw
The story of the Lee Mansion begins in the 19th century, when Saginaw was one of the most important lumber centers in the country.
From the 1850s to the 1890s, the Saginaw River Basin supplied millions of board feet of fine-grained white pine to markets in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. From there, Michigan’s lumber was shipped throughout the nation.
At its peak in 1882, production along the Saginaw River exceeded one billion board feet in a single year. Steam mills lined its riverbanks. Log rafts floated down the Tittabawassee River to boom grounds in towns that have now disappeared. Schooners and barges carried lumber across the Great Lakes and through the Erie Canal to eastern ports. Fortunes were made and, in Michigan’s lumber communities, grand homes followed.
One of those fortunes belonged to Charles Lee.
An English immigrant, Lee arrived in East Saginaw in 1862. Lee had first found success in Detroit, where he operated a sawmill and brick works during the city’s building boom.
Following that success, Lee decided to go big or go home—placing his bet on Saginaw. There, he purchased two sawmills and 200 acres of pine land in the Saginaw Valley for $40,000 (approximately $1.56 million today).
Over time, Lee became a prominent figure in the community, soon becoming a director at the East Savings Bank and a major stockholder in the Saginaw, Tuscola, and Huron Railroad.
A Mansion on the River’s Edge
In the late 1800s, Lee built his red-brick Queen Anne-style home along the Saginaw River. (There are disputes about when exactly. Some say 1874, others 1888.) Constructed out of lumber from his own mills, the 3,800-square-foot home features magnificently detailed woodwork, stately fireplaces, stained glass, and more.
Lee spent the last decades of his life in that home. Married three times, he had eight children. In 1899, he died in the house with seven of his children present. His heart for the community was recognized by his employees and associates alike.
“In a word, Charles Lee was an honest man, a useful citizen, an affectionate husband and father,” one of them eulogized in a local paper upon his death. “He did his work faithfully and well, and his sleep will be undisturbed by vain regret.”
By then, Saginaw’s white pine era was already fading. Just like the railroad industry and many others throughout America’s industrial age, the lumber industry was one punctuated by booms and busts.
Michigan’s forests were heavily depleted, and lumbermen were moving west to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Pacific Northwest. The collapse of the Saginaw lumber industry came quickly at the end of the century, leaving behind shuttered mills, drained fortunes, and a scattering of ornate mansions that no longer matched the economic reality of the rural Michigan region.
After Lee’s death, the house was purchased by Dr. Michael D. Ryan.
Ryan arrived in Saginaw in 1893 and became the first resident physician at St. Mary’s Hospital. He would remain on staff for 55 years, the longest tenure in the hospital’s history.
The lumber industry also helped kickstart Ryan’s career. In his early years, Ryan walked to nearby lumber camps to sell $5 hospital insurance plans that provided one year of medical care. He was one of the last “horse and buggy” doctors serving outlying lumber camps in the Saginaw Valley.
Over the years, Ryan became a charter member of the Michigan State Medical Society and received a presidential citation for his work with the county draft board during both World Wars.
Ryan’s daughter, Rosemary, grew up in the mansion and later married Roy DeGesero. The couple raised their family in the same house, and Rosemary would spend nearly 100 years in the home.
Over those decades, Rosemary DeGesero became a local character. An eccentric and theatrical presence, she loved the arts and often helped out at Pit and Balcony Theatre. She was also known for her devotion to cats and was widely referred to as “the cat lady” by people who didn’t know her name.
The nickname stuck, and for years the mansion itself was more commonly identified with her than with its original builder. Rosemary died in 2012 at the age of 92, a few years after moving to New Jersey to live with her daughter.
After her death, the house went up for sale. Eventually, the City of Saginaw purchased the property—which was quickly becoming dilapidated. In 2016, the city slated the once-glorious Lee Mansion for demolition.
A Second Life for the Lee Mansion
That set the stage for the mansion’s unlikely rescue.
The modern revival of the Lee Mansion was led by Alex Mixter, a 28-year-old who once wanted nothing more than to leave Saginaw behind.
After moving away and working on a documentary called Re: Saginaw, Mixter found himself called back to his hometown. In 2016, media outlets around Michigan began reporting on the “last days” of the Lee Mansion after the Saginaw City Council voted for its demolition.
That same year, a small group of volunteers showed up one Saturday to paint plywood, pull weeds, and cut grass—anything to make the property look less forgotten. Over the next two years, that modest cleanup effort eventually grew into The Lee Mansion Restoration Project.
That project, a nonprofit effort to restore the mansion, was made possible by the city’s 2018 partnership with Ann Arbor Builders, Inc.
Over the years, Mixter helped head up the project and rally the community to restore another piece of its history. Labeled by Mixter as a “front door to Saginaw” for visitors, Lee Mansion has once again become a gathering place for the community—hosting art fairs, live music, and more.
“There’s a mythology around this house,” he told the city in an article first published in 2020. “To see the community response to the project, to see the way that people have reacted to and supported the project—it’s something the people of Saginaw wanted to see happen.”
The log drives are long gone, the sawmills have vanished, and the river runs quiet.
Now roughly 150 years old, the Lee Mansion has outlasted the industry that built it and the decline that nearly erased it. It remains as one of the few physical links to Saginaw’s lumbering past.
Elyse Apel, a graduate of Hillsdale College, is a reporter for The Center Square covering Colorado and Michigan. Her work has appeared in a range of national outlets, including the Washington Examiner, The American Spectator, and The Daily Wire.
