Drones over Downtown

Doornekamp Construction Co. recently created a video showing some of their past and present projects in Napanee and Kingston. Some screen captures are shared here, making me wonder what it would have been like to have drone photography available in the heyday of the Hanley Spur. It sure would have been useful for rooftop detail modelling. Smokestacks! No doubt the drone would have, or could have, negotiated clouds of smoke wafting upwards from factory and steam locomotive smokestacks. Top photo and below - the 9 North Street Imperial Oil warehouse being repurposed for living space, with Rideaucrest Home in the background. A styrofoam-form pseudo-oil tank has been built at the north wall: 

Air conditioners really don't represent the rooftop details of years past! Though that brick wall has kept watch for decades. Note the yellowish former Whig warehouse, visible at middle-right background, near 'ground zero' at Rideau and Cataraqui Streets!

Heading toward the lake, looking back at the Woolen Mill and Dyeco. Farther to the right is the brownfields site of the former Davis Tannery and obsolete smelting activity:

Formerly a piano factory and department store, the former S&R building frames Ontario Street with former feed and grain buildings, with the former Richardson headquarters visible at Ontario and Princess:

George Lilley did his bit, flying over downtown in the late forties and early fifties in a small plane and preserving lots of images still available at the Queen's University Archives. Imperial Oil warehouse and tanks, CP roundhouse and in between, steam locomotive in parts for overseas shipment!