From its beginnings as parochial dairy farmland in the nineteenth century to a series of platted additions and subdivisions in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, the area of the Milwaukee and Emerson Residential Historic District was always treated by its residents as a high-end suburb of the small industrial City of Beloit. The district was primarily occupied by a thriving upper class, including business executives, engineers, inventors, college professors, lawyers, politicians, and doctors. The district is also differentiated by the presence of several architect designed houses and the general scale of the homes compared to adjacent neighborhoods on the east-side of Beloit.

The district conveys a sense of historical and architectural cohesiveness through its architectural designs of one hundred and fifty-seven single-family homes and occasional duplexes and apartments arranged along three blocks of Milwaukee Road, two blocks of Emerson Street, and the loop of Sherwood Drive in the City of Beloit. Representative of residential development in Rock County and of the prevailing architectural styles of the time, Queen Anne, Arts and Crafts, Craftsman, Georgian Revival, Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial Revival, Ranch, Contemporary, and other styles are prominent within the district, indicating the change of architectural fashion over the long history of the prominent district. The district is marked by its scale and the high quality of residential architectural design, since it developed over decades and on several additions and subdivisions. The neighborhood was also home to many influential figures in the development and economic life of Beloit including prominent businessmen, engineers, inventors, managers, doctors, politicians, and lawyers.

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