The Admiral's quarters

Admiral Richard E. Byrd's description of himself as "that haphazard man, who came and went at 9 Brimmer Street" captures the insouciance of a fearless explorer who routinely plumbed the most frozen, forsaken parts of the world.

In the 27 years Byrd lived in the five-story town house on Beacon Hill, he made path-breaking explorations of Antarctica, flew secret missions over Japan during World War II, agitated for world peace, and achieved stardom on a par with Lindbergh's and Roosevelt's.

Great parts of the view from 9 Brimmer have not changed in the 50 years since Byrd's death. Across the street are the same red brick homes; on the corner, the Church of the Advent. Elsewhere in Beacon Hill Gary Drug, which opened in 1936, still operates, and the only difference in Louisburg Square today is at number 19, the former chapel of St. Margaret's Convent, where John Kerry and Teresa Heinz now live.

The inside of Byrd's former house is not much changed, either; when his children converted the building into condominiums in 1982, they stipulated in deeds that "the architectural integrity of the building and the units shall be preserved without modification."

The building is now split into three apartments; the current owner is selling off the first and second floors, where Byrd worked and he and his family entertained guests, as a condominium listed at $2,295,000.

The 3,000-square-foot condominium contains Byrd's study, the back room on the second floor. It is still a light-filled space with bookshelves built around a Greek Revival-style fireplace, secret storage areas on the opposite side, and a narrow deck over the bay window below. Pictures of Byrd at work in what appears to be the study invariably show a large globe close to the desk.

A balcony is off the study, and a photo from a 1947 story of Byrd shows him relaxing there, with its views of the Esplanade and the Charles River. The caption under the picture reads: "The admiral agrees there is no place like home. Though he has wandered to the ends of the earth, he says he has never found a place with the charm of Boston or the breathtaking beauty of the Esplanade in the springtime."

From his garden, Byrd would have had an easy walk to the Esplanade, until in his later years when the opening of Storrow Drive in 1951 broke that tranquility with its wall of traffic.

The dining room on the first floor exudes Byrd's rugged presence. Sheathed in walnut paneling, it has a bay window with latticework that looks over the garden below. When he lived there, the bay was filled with an enormous aquarium, which reflected sunlight through the fish and into the dark-wood room, said Clarinda Northrop, the current owner.

The fish were not his only pets. Most important was his dog, Igloo, a wire fox terrier who accompanied Byrd on his first explorations and was always at his side. Byrd was so devoted to him that Igloo's burial in 1931, at an animal cemetery in Dedham, was delayed for nearly two months until the admiral could return from a lecture tour.

The funeral was widely covered in news accounts at the time, and in one Byrd describes Igloo as "fearless," who "got the idea he could lick" any dog in the polar mush team. However, Igloo "didn't care" for whales when they "poked their heads above the ice." The dog, he said, "stayed back a little way barking."

Local legend has it that he also kept a penguin, a souvenir from one of his adventures, in the upstairs bathtub. Maybe so, but another photo inside the Byrd home shows what end such a pet might have met: stuffed and displayed on a pedestal next to mounts of his many commemorations.

Byrd and his family moved into 9 Brimmer so his wife would not be alone when he was away. He came from a prominent Virginia family, but she was of the Boston Ames, whose family lived next door, at number 7. Indeed, technically the house was hers all those years, not his. Marie Ames Byrd got the house from her father in 1927, according to the Suffolk Country Registry of Deeds, and was listed as the owner all the years the couple lived there.

"He would be away for two to three years at a time, and she needed help with the kids," said William French, the listing agent at broker Hammond Residential.

Her family's proximity, no doubt a great help in raising their children, brought about one of the quirkier features of the house -- a not-so-secret passageway.

"They broke through the walls" on the second and third floors, said French. The passages, in the back of the house, have since been sealed up, but their traces in the walls remain.

The home is as unique as its former owner. Unlike the two brownstones next to it, built at the same time in the 1880s, number 9 narrows front to back. "It's pie shaped," notes Northrop. The reason: number 9 sits at the bend in Brimmer Street.

In his day, Byrd was as famous as any man alive. He often was greeted by hundreds of thousands of admirers when he returned from his latest polar feat. A savvy marketer and communicator, Byrd was a star of early radio, due to CBS's broadcasting weekly updates from "Little America," his base camp for his 1933-35 expedition to Antarctica.

But when home in Boston, Byrd's life was no different than that of any other upper class man of means. He exercised daily and was a member of the august Somerset Club on Beacon Street. His son Richard Jr., known as Dickie, was at Harvard, according to a 1939 Life Magazine piece, and his three daughters were attending Winsor School -- institutions that still attract the bright and privileged of Beacon Hill.

Of the renovations that have been done at 9 Brimmer -- the bathrooms and kitchen are what need fixing the most today -- one thing that hasn't changed is the front door, with its wonderfully eccentric piece of wood and glass. Today it still casts a cross-hatched pattern of light into the entryway of the condominium.

Northrop will continue to live in the top two floors, accessed separately; the garden floor is being rented out as an apartment.

After Byrd's death on March 11, 1957, his family continued to live in the house. Local legend has it that his son, also an admiral, was more collector than explorer. Northrop said the younger Byrd filled it with "newspapers, refrigerators, and old stoves" until neighbors pushed the city to condemn it in the early 1980s. "They thought it was a fire hazard, which it probably was," she said.

Still, Byrd's world around Brimmer Street remains a stolid redoubt that stands aloof from the hurly-burly of the city. It is an enclave, which was what Byrd might have needed most when he returned from years away -- with or without a penguin in tow.