The building at 201 Peterson Street has been many things to Fort Collins over the past half-century: a place to find a job listing, a warm corner to read a newspaper, a first library card, a quiet hour away from everything else. On the evening of October 17, 2026, it will be a disco.
Poudre Libraries is throwing Old Town Library a 50th birthday party, and the guest list is anyone who walks through the door. The free, all-ages event runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m., after regular library hours. Doors close at 5 p.m. and reopen at 5:30 for the celebration, with no early admittance. The theme is the 1970s, and costumes are encouraged.
The schedule builds toward a centerpiece that has been waiting underground for five decades. Doors open at 5:30. At 6 p.m., the library will open a time capsule buried in 1976, the year the building debuted. Cake is cut at 6:15, and from 6:30 until the 8 p.m. close, visitors can move through themed activity stations, retro games, refreshments, and historical exhibits tracing the library's roots back more than a century.
That the party lands on a 1970s theme is not just a stylistic choice. The building opened on October 18, 1976, and the era of its birth is baked into its story.
Fort Collins' library history reaches back much further than the Peterson Street building. As early as the 1870s, residents were agitating for a public reading room. A letter to the Fort Collins Courier in January 1878 captured the mood of the campaign, with local resident Simon Sikes arguing that "if all those who are personally interested will give it a little time, a little attention, and very little money it will be an easy matter to establish the nucleus of a respectable library." He added a pointed suggestion: "But above all if the ladies will take hold of the matter it can be made a success."
The ladies did. In 1882, Fort Collins library services began with a community reading room in the rear of a Presbyterian church, the first public library service in the city's history. The reading room moved through several homes around town, including the Old City Hall at 238 Walnut St. and a building on the Welch Block at the northwest corner of College and Mountain Avenue.
The first permanent library arrived on July 1, 1904, when the Carnegie Building opened at 200 Mathews Street in what is now Library Park. A gift of $12,500 from Andrew Carnegie funded its construction, and it opened with 2,770 books on hand. Its first librarian was Elfreda Stebbins, who served in the building until 1931. The library expanded in 1939, but by the 1970s it was straining badly. The Carnegie building and its staff were serving a city of 65,000 people from a space designed for a population of about 12,000.
Between 1950 and 1970, Fort Collins' population had more than doubled. A citizen advocacy group called Designing Tomorrow Today, working with the Fort Collins City Council and voters, pushed a capital improvement project that would fund a larger, more modern library along with other civic institutions including the Lincoln Center, Mulberry Pool, and transportation infrastructure.
The road to Peterson Street was not smooth. The City Council initially chose to put the new library at Washington Park on the City Hall block, within the boundaries of Maple, Laporte, Howes, and Meldrum Streets. The public objected strongly. After weeks of debate, the question went to a public ballot vote in 1975, and voters chose Lincoln Park -- later renamed Library Park to avoid confusion with the new Lincoln Center -- as the site. The result put the new building just east of the Carnegie Building it was replacing, a short walk from where Fort Collins' library story began.
In anticipation of the move, the Fort Collins Public Library ran a book acquisition program. From 1974 to 1976, it combined $360,000 in federal and local funds to buy roughly 30,000 new volumes to fill the new space. When the building opened in October 1976, it offered 33,500 square feet and room for 109,000 books, at a cost of about $1.75 million.
Half a century later, the numbers tell their own story. The building, now known as Old Town Library, has grown past 40,000 square feet and holds more than 105,000 items. In the first eight months of 2026 alone, more than 251,000 people walked through its doors. The district behind it, the Poudre River Public Library District, serves over 210,000 people across roughly 1,800 square miles of northern Larimer County.
The institution's Carnegie roots are still being honored. In January, Poudre Libraries will receive a $10,000 gift from Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of Carnegie Libraries 250, an initiative marking the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and recognizing the roughly 1,280 Carnegie libraries still serving their communities nationwide. The library has said it will use the funds for essential spaces, services, and collections.
For the birthday itself, the time capsule is the draw. The 1976 capsule was buried in a small alcove, and a concrete slab marking it sits a few feet south of the doors to Old Town Library -- a modest landmark for a half-century of civic memory. What is inside will be revealed at 6 p.m. on October 17, in front of whoever shows up.
That open-door quality is the point. The event is free, drop-in, and designed for all ages, with no tickets and no registration. Visitors are invited to wear their best 1970s attire, though it is not required. Because the party happens after hours, regular library services will not be available that evening.
Fifty years after a city voted on where to put its library, the building is still holding the question open: who gets to walk in, and what do they find when they do. On October 17, the answer comes with cake.