Nipper the RCA dog

Albany's Nipper is a 28-foot dog on a warehouse roof, and the Albany Institute of History & Art says that, across the long and rich history of Albany, "Nipper ranks as the top dog". According to the Institute, the four-ton steel and fibreglass statue came to 991 Broadway in 1958, when a rundown concrete warehouse built in 1900 for the American Gas Meter Company was renovated as the home of RTA, an appliance distributor specialising in RCA products. The figure was fabricated in Chicago, shipped by rail in five sections, assembled on the roof with the help of a ten-story crane and attached to a metal frame. It recreates Francis Barraud's painting "His Master's Voice", which showed a real terrier from nineteenth-century England listening to a gramophone. The Associated Press reported in 2026 that Albany's Nipper is bigger than the 14-foot Nipper in Baltimore.

The building underneath is the worry. The AP reported in April 2026 that the four-storey warehouse had been unused for at least a decade and that foreclosure litigation had run for years. The Historic Albany Foundation listed it among its places in peril by 2024, and in March 2026 the city put a red-and-white caution placard at its entrance as a warning to first responders. The Institute notes that Nipper has no formal legal protection as a landmark. The AP added that the mayor's office was working to add him to the city's landmark list, that a state board had nominated the surrounding warehouse district for state and national historic registers, and that there was no serious talk of moving him.