Rolling Acres is a small neighborhood in 37206 between Porter Road and the railroad, with Shelby Park — the Shelby Golf Course side of it — along its whole southern edge. Lockeland Springs is to the west, Eastwood to the northwest and Rosebank across the tracks to the east, and Eastland Avenue runs straight through the middle. About half of it was laid out as “Rolling Acres” in 1941 and 1948, and Skyview Drive, Shady Lane and Hackberry Lane curve through those plats, unlike the straight grid of the older streets around them; the streets at the north end — Waters, Powers, McCarn and part of Rosebank Avenue — were first laid out in earlier additions, beginning in 1905.
The houses follow the plats. About six in ten buildings date from the 1940s and ’50s, a little over half of all the buildings are brick, and the older houses run around 1,500 square feet on lots of about a quarter acre. About one in five has gone up since 2010, many as two homes on one lot. New construction has rules here: since 2015 most of the neighborhood has been under Metro’s contextual overlay, which ties a new house’s setback, height and footprint to the houses on either side, and the northern streets also fall inside the Eastwood conservation overlay, where Metro’s Historic Zoning Commission reviews new construction, additions and demolition.
Daily life leans on the edges. Noko is on the Porter Road–Eastland Avenue corner, Cafe Roze and Vinyl Tap are just past the north tip, Ugly Mugs is across Porter Road on Eastland, and Five Points and the Riverside Village shops are each about a mile away. Downtown is three to four miles by Eastland Avenue and Gallatin, roughly 10 to 15 minutes outside rush hour.