Cherokee Park is the small neighborhood north of West End Avenue and west of Wilson Boulevard, with the CSX rail line and McCabe Park’s golf course along its north and west edges — Cherokee, Mockingbird, Lauderdale, Mayfair, Valley and Aberdeen roads, Cambridge Avenue and most of the west side of Wilson. It was surveyed in 1928 for a Louisville developer, the Wakefield-Davis Realty Company, and platted in 1928 and 1929, after the city limits were expanded to take in the land. It was laid out differently from the older grid neighborhoods closer to downtown: some streets curve, the lots have driveways instead of alleys, and no sidewalks were built — what Metro calls “more of a suburban feel.”
The houses are mostly one- and one-and-a-half-story cottages and bungalows, built from the early 1900s into the early 1950s — Tudor Revival, English cottage and Colonial Revival, and Minimal Traditional houses too — and more than half are brick. Many were built as duplexes, and most of those are single-family homes now; the base zoning is still mostly R8, which allows two-family homes. Lots run about 9,500 square feet. Since August 2000 the neighborhood has been a Metro neighborhood conservation overlay, so new construction, additions and demolition go through the Historic Zoning Commission, which asks new infill to be at least 80 percent brick or stone (Cambridge Avenue excepted). It is not on the National Register.
Where Cherokee Road meets Sloan Road, a Metro access point leads onto the Richland Creek Greenway loop around McCabe Park’s golf course; the Murphy Road restaurants in Sylvan Park are under a mile north, and the White Bridge Road shops, Trader Joe’s among them, are about a mile and a half west. Downtown is about four and a half miles by West End Avenue, 10 to 15 minutes outside rush hour, Vanderbilt about three, and WeGo’s route 3 (West End) stops at Wilson Boulevard about every 10 minutes at midday on weekdays.