Built for use as School House #4, in 1916 the village of East Milwaukee purchased the building for use as the village hall. The following year, East Milwaukee became Shorewood as part of a concerted community effort to attract upwardly mobile professionals employed in Milwaukee.

The development of present-day Shorewood began in 1836, when developers tried to establish an industrial community called Mechanicsville on the Milwaukee River. Subsequent attempts to create a summer resort also failed, and when East Milwaukee was incorporated in 1900, it only had about two hundred inhabitants.

Throughout the teens, the village made an effort to increase its social cache via the extension of paved roads and municipal services from Milwaukee. In 1920, Shorewood had a population of 2,650. By 1930 the village population had increased to 13,479 and had filled 95% of its available landmass. At the advent of the Great Depression, the village board enacted the Shorewood Plan, an ambitious local work-relief program. In 1934, the village received funding from the Works Progress Administration and by 1939 there were 57 ongoing WPA-sponsored projects in the village, including an eighteen-thousand-dollar village hall remodeling. The architecturally non-descript schoolhouse received Colonial Revival ornamentation, including a Doric Order portico with an iron balcony over the main entrance and a semi-circular transom above the door.

Many Depression era furnishings remain, and the building is still in use today as the center of Shorewood municipal government.