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To support or not support? A bid to save the Sanborn House’s carriage house is a question the School Committee is grappling with and more information is what they’re seeking.
When the Winchester School Committee filed an application in August 2025 to demolish the Sanborn House’s carriage house, then School Committee Vice Chair and now current Chair Tim Matthews said the goal was to start a conversation on what to do with the worn down building.
But they didn’t just start a conversation, they started a movement.
The 100 plus-year-old carriage house sits on High Street, sandwiched between the Sanborn House and the Ambrose Elementary School. Because it sits on school grounds, the School Committee has jurisdiction over the property.
Friends of the Carriage House have launched the Save Our Carriage House website aimed at renovating the building to be used as a community resource, but to do that they need the School Committee’s help.
In June, then again at a recent School Committee meeting, members of the Historical Society urged School Committee members to send a letter of support to the Winchester Committee on Community Preservation (WCCP) for the Historical Society’s application, which sought funds to repair the leaky carriage house roof.
The School Committee, however, has thus far declined to extend that help. Committee member Tom Hopcroft was quick to point out it wasn’t because they don’t support the project, “It’s that we don’t have the information at this time to be able to make the informed decision.”
Committee member John Bellaire said he essentially supports the effort to rebuild the carriage house, particularly in light of Town Meeting’s vote,
“I think particularly based on the discussion at Town Meeting, we have a responsibility to develop that pathway,” he said, referring to the spring vote that blocked a request to demolish the building.
During the May 4 Town Meeting discussion, school officials said visits to the building had turned up drug paraphernalia, condom wrappers and a high chair that had migrated from inside the structure to outside it. Students on Ambrose’s third floor can see a family of raccoons coming and going through a hole in the roof.
Capital Planning Committee Chair Roger McPeek said keeping the building costs the town about $3,000 a year in insurance, plus the risk that vandals disturbing contained asbestos could turn a manageable hazard into a contaminated structure.
Winchester Historical Society board member William Swanton, however, said the society envisioned a single-floor exhibit and performance space, an approach that avoids triggering full ADA upgrades on all three floors and brings the cost well below the multimillion-dollar plans the town had rejected before.
The vote fell short of the two-thirds needed.
The CPA application
Bellaire said he wasn’t comfortable supporting the Historical Society’s application as it was written.
“Though I’ve been impressed by the Save Our Carriage House folks so far and all they’ve gotten accomplished in the last few months I just don’t think this is ready for public funds when I’d like to see more private funds raised,” he said. “And also, I’d also like to see a little bit more detail around what the project would really entail.”
In the end, Bellaire made a motion asking Matthews to pen a letter to Save Our Carriage House that declines to provide a letter of support for the roof restoration WCCP application; provides feedback on the WCCP application for the carriage house roof restoration; and expresses the committee’s commitment to “ongoing engagement and partnership among Save Our Carriage House, the Winchester School Committee, the Ambrose community, the surrounding neighborhoods, and the broader Winchester public to develop a path forward for the Sanborn Carriage House.”
School Committee member Karen Maruyama Bolognese said if they truly planned to include the Ambrose community in the discussion then there needed to be greater input on the project, more opinions on whether they support the project and more understanding on exactly what would be happening to their campus.
While committee member Stefanie Mnayarji was adamant there be no construction while school is in session, Historical Society President Electra Govoni reminded them that when the Sanborn House was renovated, it was done with the utmost concern for the environment, the safety and care of the children and the community and within guide lines from the state as well as with coordination with the Ambrose School.
“We’re just here to say that we are still these people, we are still this organization,” she said.
Matthews reminded everyone that when past decisions were being made about the carriage house, none of the current members were on the committee, yet he feels they are being blamed for those past decisions.
‘Any claims by the Historical Society that children would not be impacted or it’s in the corner just shows they don’t have an understanding of how our children use this property, how the kids walk to school, how they leave school, how they use the community garden, which goes to the larger point that this is just premature.’
Ambrose parent Norah Cooney
And when it comes to the community, opinions are wildly divergent, he noted.
Some want to save the carriage house and others, like parent Norah Cooney, urged the committee not to send a letter of support.
Cooney said, during public comment, that the Ambrose community was not given a sufficient heads up about the application or the ability to weigh in on it.
“Any claims by the Historical Society that children would not be impacted or it’s in the corner just shows they don’t have an understanding of how our children use this property, how the kids walk to school, how they leave school, how they use the community garden, which goes to the larger point that this is just premature,” she said.
On the flip side, Historical Commission member Julie Broderick urged School Committee members to support the application. She called the renovation of the carriage house a perfect example of how WCCP funds should be used.
Historical Society member Michelle McCarthy, also former Ambrose PTO president, said she hoped the School Committee could see the bigger picture, that the Ambrose School and the Sanborn House are really one big campus.
“We worked really well together, and I hope that that will continue,” she said. “We want to make sure that this building is safe for the Ambrose community, and so we can continue to work with them.”
To read about the history of the Sanborn carriage house, check out OPINION: Winchester’s Sanborn Carriage House has a grand old heritage.
Chris Stevens is an award-winning journalist who has spent 25 years chasing, editing and photographing stories on the North Shore. She is the co-founder and managing editor of Gotta Know Medford.
