Edit: I also recall that in one of his very earliest writings on this topic, Thurston gave a different proof, certainly not explicit, that the boundary is a sphere. Namely, from the existence of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism $\phi$, which acts with attractor--repeller dynamics, one gets a covering by two open sets homeomorphic to Euclidean space: for any neighborhood $U_+$ of the attracting fixed point and any neighborhood $U_-$ of the repelling fixed point there exists $n>0$ such that $\phi^n(U_-)$ and $U_+$ cover the boundary. It follows that the boundary is homeomorphic to a sphere. I posted this question to verify that the same was true for manifolds with boundary, and so the same proof works for compactified Teichmuller space, as Thurston undoubtedly knew: the action of a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism on compactified Teichmuller space also has attractor-repeller dynamics, and so it is covered by two manifold-with-boundary coordinate charts, and so it is homeomorphic to a closed ball.