Last year, I borrowed a drone from a friend and took a bunch of pictures around Cincinnati's urban core. This year, I finally decided to pick up one of my own, so I'll be using this thread to share some of my aerial photography. If anyone else has aerial photos of Cincinnati, feel free to share them in this thread!

 

I'll start off with two photos featuring Music Hall, which is under renovation and supposed to reopen this fall.

 

 

Niiiiiiiiiiiice!

Absolutely stunning second shot. OTRs density and the steep, lush, green hills that ring the basin are equally impressive. I love the varying heights and pitches of the roofs in OTR, too.

You can't overstate the value of the varied, fine grain roof lines. Losing this quality with overly large car parks or faux-grain development should be a concern.

Travis, these shots are absolutely great. Can't wait to see more. Love that density and hate seeing it broken up by garages. Looking out towards Taft Stadium, makes me wonder how well the FC Cincinnati stadium would fit in with the surrounding environment if it was to go there. I think I may be starting to feel even better about Newport...

Now a lot of places want white roofs since these days air conditioning costs more than heating in this part of the country.

^ Every time I see pictures of these flat roofs that aren't visible from the street (SCPA for example), the more I realize how big of an opportunity solar panel installation could be.

^ Every time I see pictures of these flat roofs that aren't visible from the street (SCPA for example), the more I realize how big of an opportunity solar panel installation could be.

 

We live across from SCPA and have a nice flat roof with no shade.  I've thought many times that solar panels would be great, but the economics of it are still just out of range.  Hopefully (even with Trump as President), this will change in the next few years.

Loving the relationship between the pavement in Washington Park and the roof of Music Hall. I've never noticed that before... I am also not at drone height to make the connection.

^ Every time I see pictures of these flat roofs that aren't visible from the street (SCPA for example), the more I realize how big of an opportunity solar panel installation could be.

 

We live across from SCPA and have a nice flat roof with no shade.  I've thought many times that solar panels would be great, but the economics of it are still just out of range.  Hopefully (even with Trump as President), this will change in the next few years.

 

Oh yeah, solar is still a little out of reach for most homeowners. I'd love to see the city lead the charge with buildings they own, such as SCPA. Even the Mercer Commons garage could get solar panels similar to what the Zoo did with their parking lot.

Awesome photos and the Empower building is huge!  Though to be fair if it looks good on hoof then we should be fairly happy with it.  Though times have changed, it's going to be hard to be economical with slanting roofs and broken up buildings moving forward in OTR with the real estate and construction costs. 

Thanks for all the awesome feedback! Here are a few more.

 

 

15th & Vine office building under construction:

 

 

 

 

Ziegler Park under construction (although the pool is now open):

 

 

 

Awesome, thanks Travis.

 

Anyone know if there are any plans for that old church at the NE Corner of Republic and W. 15th?

 

Is that where they store the Red Bikes?

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1119403,-84.5165311,3a,75y,133.27h,94.26t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sACDnPhw5IXTbDlCver-0aw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

I thought RedBike was using that as their office space and maintenance facility. Not sure if there are any plans beyond that.

They store Red Bikes there and use the upper levels for office space. They renovated the interior of the upper levels. Pretty sure the brown garage is filled with maintenance stuff.

whoa -- amazing views --

 

good news about the music hall and there certainly is lots of redevelopment activity in those scenes.

 

please continue to drone on!

New Martin Luther King Blvd. interchange on I-71 and widening of surrounding streets (Uptown Access Project):

 

 

 

 

 

Rooftop bar at Rhinegeist Brewery in Over-the-Rhine:

 

 

 

Fort Washington Way:

 

 

Former Pogue's Garage (4th & Race):

 

 

Site of future downtown Kroger:

 

 

Over-the-Rhine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished Music Hall:

 

 

Finished Ziegler Park:

 

 

 

Pendleton:

 

 

 

WCPO:

 

 

Around Union Terminal:

 

 

 

Lick Run Greenway project in South Fairmont:

 

 

 

University of Cincinnati:

 

 

 

Clifton Heights:

 

 

 

 

 

Northside:

 

 

St. Bernard industrial:

 

 

I-71 construction near downtown:

 

 

 

Avondale (top 5 homes demolished for Childrens Hospital expansion):

 

 

R.I.P. Cincinnati Gardens:

 

 

 

Big Mac Bridge:

 

 

SouthShore condos:

 

 

Cincinnati Southern Bridge:

 

These are amazing. Thanks for posting! I'm excited for any snowy photos of OTR or Mt. Adams once we get a good storm.

Agreed, these are amazing AND I want to see snowy drone photos.

I absolutely love the new Music Hall renovation but I kind of wish the rose window had been painted a bit differently. It’s harder to discern the tracery with the new/old paint job.

^ did you do this all with a drone?

Yes sir. In some of these shots I'm trying to get as low as possible to give a perspective more like what you would see from a rooftop... if there were 10 story buildings in OTR.

These are really incredible. I could look at them all day! From a drone, it really looks like OTR and downtown just bleed into each other seemlessly, but at ground level, Central Parkway and all the parking lots in the northern CBD really make a pretty definite divide. I love seeing the density of OTR from the drone, though. These photos really demonstrate how there is nothing like OTR in terms of built density and urbanity in the rest of Ohio, or probably the rest of the Midwest outside of Chicago. Also, I love the shots of the massive rail yard behind Union Terminal.

For a neighborhood comprised almost entirely of 20-foot wide 3-floor homes separated by 5-foot gaps, it is amazing how much more dense the average NYC neighborhood is. 

 

Eliminate the 60" gaps and the neighborhood could have 20% more homes of the same sort.  But in NYC the buildings are nearly all multifamilies and nearly all extend closer to the rear lot line.  So there are often 2-3X as many people on a block that doesn't appear much different from the sidewalk. 

 

 

Cincinnati’s inconsistencies, in both density and in setback size, has always struck me as a little weird and unique. Even in Pittsburgh do the houses touch more often than not and homes seem fairly consistently set back from the road, whereas in Cincinnati it’s anyone’s guess as to how much of a setback the next house in the sequence. Then you have places like Corryville which are somehow very dense and not dense at the same time, with some humongous lots over there. And then you have the extremely weird outliers like those 1.5-story second empire houses on Vine that are very small compared to the rest of the area, or that one townhouse on Clifton that’s set all the way at the back edge of the property.

Yeah the range of homes in CUF ranged from about 1890 to about 1925, with almost all homes on a particular street built at the same time, but different types of homes on adjacent streets.  For example, the 10 or so homes on Detzel are 40 years younger than the ones they back up to on Lyon and Ohio.  So somebody, for unknown reasons, held out on selling that 2-3 acre parcel right in the middle of the neighborhood until about 1925.  Those homes on Detzel are similar to what you'd see in Bond Hill. 

 

 

Maybe they were extremely prescient and were waiting for the day that yuppie boxes would inevitably take over CUF and hoped to build a 5-story student community there but got tired of waiting for developers to catch up!  ;D

Yeah Detzel is the greatest anomaly in the area.  I'm really surprised that it was developed as single-family homes and not a large apartment building. 

 

The big question over in Corryville is why there are huge lots between Euclid and Highland.  There was space for 2-3 north/south streets but they only build one -- Eden -- with the giant duplex homes.  There apparently wasn't anything around Eden and what is now MLK through about 1910 because the location was eyed for a railroad tunnel portal.  There was an early sort-of subway plan that would have seen a commuter railroad tunnel from downtown north to that point, where the Vontz Center is now, and then travel on the surface to where Ritchie's Chicken is now.  Then it would have tunneled under Gaslight and connected to the College Hill interurban that ran next to Spring Grove Cemetery on Crawford. 

 

So if that had been built we would have seen the area now occupied by the nursing school, north to the zoo and then Forest, lined by large apartment buildings. And then another cluster of high-density residential between Dane and Crawford in Northside, intermingled with industry that used spurs from the older freight lines.