Moorestown Nipper is stolen - again

The 5-foot-tall, 75-pound fiberglass dog stood vigil on Main Street in Moorestown for five years.

Part of a townwide art project, the dog - named the Roots of Moorestown - was bought at auction by a group of residents and given to the Moorestown Community House. From the front lawn, it greeted the building's visitors and anyone strolling down Main Street.

But this week, the dog was stolen, the third theft of a Nipper since the project started in 2005.

"It wasn't little Grandma who did it," said Bill Newborg, executive director of the Community House. "You need a lot of strength to pull this thing out of the ground."

The dog, a colorful replica of the RCA Victor trademark Nipper, was ripped from a metallic base that had been screwed into the ground and anchored by cinderblocks.

It was stolen between 10 p.m. Tuesday, when the Community House locked up for the night, and 4:30 a.m. Wednesday. A cook discovered the theft when he arrived to whip up breakfast for a Rotary Club gathering that morning.

Newborg hopes it's just a prank.

"I'm really disappointed that somebody would do that," he said. "It's been a fixture for a long time. It has a cost value, but it's priceless in the sense of what it means."

Residents bought the Roots of Moorestown at a 2005 auction for around $5,000. It was decorated with historic Moorestown buildings.

"People really do like roots generally, and this depicted the roots of the town," Newborg said.

Eldridge Johnson, a Moorestown resident, started the Victor Talking Machine Co. around the turn of the 20th century, and adopted Nipper as a logo. Radio Corp. of America bought Johnson's company and retained the Nipper logo, Newborg said.

Midge Ingersoll, a Moorestown artist, painted the Roots of Moorestown Nipper.

Other cities have their own animal tributes. Chicago unveiled more than 300 bovine sculptures that made up "Cows on Parade" in 1999, while Cincinnati has it's "Big Pig Gig," more than 400 swine.

Some art lovers didn't think much of the Moorestown Nippers. But the statues had their fans - families posed for pictures with the Roots of Moorestown, with the family dog, too - and interesting names like WWII Flying Ace; Harvest Moon Doggie; El Perro Pintado; and Tupper-Tut's Pup.

In 2005, before the auction that netted thousands of dollars for the nonprofit agencies involved, Tupper-Tut's Pup was stolen from the Lutheran Home's lawn. But the big brown dog in Egyptian garb turned up in a Pennsauken woods, near the Betsy Ross Bridge.

Shortly after, a second Nipper was stolen. It was found in the front yard of a Maple Shade apartment complex.

So the track record is good for recovering a Nipper, and Newborg is hopeful.

Virginia Devery, a former director of development for the Evergreens, a retirement community that benefitted from the Nipper auction, started the Moorestown Nipper project two years before the auction. She said she was disappointed by the theft.

"He is part of a streetscape. He is there in the winter and summer, and he is also a work of art," she said.

Roots of Moorestown, said Devery, "belongs on Main Street, on the corner of the Community House property."

Like Newborg, who told Devery about the theft, she hopes it's some sort of prank.

"We just want it back," Newborg said. "It belongs to the town."

Anyone with information on the theft is being encouraged to call the Moorestown police tip line at 856-914-3092 or e-mail tips@moorestownpd.com.