Westborough in the early 1960s was a town working hard to keep pace with itself. The postwar boom had arrived swiftly and without mercy on the school system. Despite having already built one new elementary school to house its burgeoning young student population, Westborough soon found itself in need of another building for the continually expanding population. The result was a new elementary school on Eli Whitney Street, completed by Fontaine Bros. in 1963.
The 21-classroom building was designed to serve 525 students, a substantial facility for a town that had been scrambling to keep school seats ahead of neighborhood growth. Its construction was also fueled by the implementation of the National Defense Education Act, which mandated curriculum and instructional updates and pushed communities across Massachusetts to invest in modern, purpose-built schools. Alderman & MacNeish, the West Springfield firm behind the design, had developed one of the most active educational practices in the region, with public school projects stretching from the Connecticut River Valley to the coast.
Fontaine Bros. delivered the project on a lean budget, producing a well-organized single-story campus whose low-profile massing and generous site fit the scale of the surrounding neighborhood. The school opened on December 2, 1963 and went on to serve Westborough students for nearly six decades, eventually bearing the name of Annie E. Fales, a beloved local teacher who spent more than 50 years in Westborough classrooms and lived to be 104 years old.
The project to replace the original Fales school began in 2020, and a new building opened to students in November 2021. The original structure was subsequently demolished, its site repurposed for a playground and bus loop. That a building completed in 1963 served its community well enough to remain in continuous use for nearly 60 years speaks to the durability of the original work.
