Sylvan Park is the West Nashville neighborhood between Charlotte Avenue and the CSX rail line, from I-440 west to Richland Creek and McCabe Park. It began as part of a land company’s “New Town,” whose lots went to auction in 1887; when the area was annexed to Nashville in 1906, its numbered avenues were renamed for states — which is why the streets here are Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Dakota and Nebraska — and the Sylvan Park plat itself was recorded in 1909. A streetcar, the “Sylvan Park Dinky,” once ran out from Charlotte to connect it with the line into town.
The houses run from Victorian and Queen Anne cottages of the 1890s and 1900s to the bungalows that filled in through the Depression, then plainer post-war houses, on lots of around 7,800 square feet, typically 50 feet wide. Since the 2010s, teardowns and infill have put new houses and pairs of homes on many blocks. Most of the neighborhood is zoned single-family and has no historic overlay. Two small conservation districts — Park and Elkins avenues (2011) and the Bowling House District on Nebraska and Utah (2017, expanded in 2021) — are where Metro’s Historic Zoning Commission reviews demolition, additions and new construction; a neighborhood-wide overlay was proposed in 2005 and an expansion in 2014, and both were withdrawn.
Daily life centers on Murphy Road at 46th Avenue — Park Cafe, Lion’s Share, Star Bagel and Edley’s Bar-B-Que — and on Charlotte Avenue along the north edge, with Bobbie’s Dairy Dip (a walk-up stand since 1951), the Richland Park branch library at the edge of Richland Park, and the Saturday farmers market in the park. McCabe Park has a 27-hole golf course and the Richland Creek Greenway loop, with the McCabe Community Center beside it. Downtown is about four and a half miles by Charlotte Avenue, 10 to 15 minutes outside rush hour, and I-40 is just north at the 46th/51st Avenue exit.