Nipper on the Rooftop

There is a four-ton dog sitting on a rooftop on Broadway, and Albany barely notices him anymore. Nipper was an English terrier mix who lived in the eighteen eighties. When he died, his owner's brother, a painter named Francis Barraud, depicted him sitting beside an Edison-Bell phonograph horn, head cocked, listening.

Barraud called the painting His Master's Voice. The Gramophone Company bought the image in eighteen ninety-nine. Victor Talking Machine, later RCA Victor, adopted it in the United States and turned Nipper into the most recognized trademark in the recorded music business for the better part of a century.

The RCA distribution building at nine ninety-one Broadway in Albany was a regional hub for the company, and somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century a large cast iron and steel Nipper statue was placed on top of it. He weighs four tons and towers over the street from his rooftop perch. He sits with his ears up, listening for something.

The building long ago ceased to be an RCA facility and is now owned by a moving company. Nipper remained on the roof. When the sign below him has changed, when the business below him has changed, when the era that made him famous passed into nostalgia, Nipper stayed.

He has become one of those accidental civic monuments that cities keep because removing them would feel stranger than the oddness of having them. From certain angles on Broadway, looking north, you can see him against the sky, a hundred-year-old dog waiting for music that already played.