Purpose
Connected to a spur of the Stobcross Railway, the crane's primary purpose was the lifting of heavy machinery – mainly Springburn's then renowned steam locomotives – onto ships for export. With the decline of locomotive manufacturing and other heavy engineering in the city during the 1960s, use of the crane continued to decline and it fell completely into disuse in the early 1990s.
Today the crane remains as a landmark, a Category A listed structure, and one of the most identifiable images of Glasgow. During the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival (sited on the Princes Dock on the opposite bank of the river) a full-size replica locomotive, made from straw by local sculptor George Wyllie, was suspended from the crane. The crane's image is used extensively in the media, including by BBC Scotland news programmes and for the quintessentially Glaswegian crime drama Taggart. Pre-dating those uses, It has been the Logo of Clydeside Television Productions since 1986. It stands as a symbol to the industrial heartland that Glasgow and Clydeside were in the early to mid-20th century, and of the downturn of those industries. The docks having long since been filled in to be replaced with the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and the Clyde Auditorium. The North Rotunda (part of the defunct Clyde Harbour Tunnel) stands next to the crane.
Read more about this topic: Finnieston Crane
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—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)
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—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Art for art’s sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own.”
—Benjamin Constant (1767–1834)