Finnieston Crane

Category: Historic Building

1. Finnieston Crane, Broomielaw.

The Finnieston Crane is one of Glasgow's most famous landmarks. Since it was built in 1931, it has been transformed from a functional, industrial object to being a defunct urban sculpture. Once, the crane was at the centre of the city's thriving port, where ships from all over the world would berth to be loaded with Glasgow's products. Glasgow once exported a myriad of different engineering products all worldwide, including steam engines. One of the most spectacular sights a docker might have seen in the 1930s and 1940s would have been the powerful steam locomotives being loaded onto ships travelling to India or China.
The crane is now disused and is unofficially preserved as a monument to Glasgow's manufacturing industries. It stands now in a very different setting from the busy port of sixty years ago. Instead of bustling dockers and cargo ships, the landscape surrounding the crane has been stripped almost bare. A large car park almost surrounds the crane and the North Rotunda, an unusual round building which was once the entrance to a tunnel under the Clyde and which is now a restaurant. Over the river, the former Garden festival site has been cleared and has slowly started to be built on; a new office building and the Festival Park housing development have started to fill the derelict site.
But perhaps the most exciting building in this area is the "Armadillo", a silver-skinned and windowless hall adjacent to the SECC, which is used as a concert and conference hall.
With all of this activity going on around it, and with the continuing regeneration of Glasgow's waterfront, the Finnieston Crane has stood guard over many radical changes in the recent history of the Clyde. Once a symbol of the strength and success of Glasgow's workforce, the crane is now a symbol of Glasgow's transformation from industrial to post-industrial city.