Grindlay reported that the portraits only showed some evidence of moisture here and there.

Some artwork in the African and African American studies department was more damaged, however, and is still being restored by the Fogg, according to department administrator Giselle Jackson.

Building restoration began immediately after the leak had been sealed. Water was pumped out and hot air pumped in through yellow tubes attached to drying machines in the Barker parking lot, which raised ground floor temperatures to 108 degrees for a week or so, according to Parimal G. Patil, assistant professor of the study of religion.

“We had to open up walls to make sure the wall cavity was dry,” Lichten said. “Once it was completely dried we had to put it back together—that was a long process.”

Carpeting also needed to be replaced and walls repainted in sections of the eastern wing.

But construction has been completed sooner than expected, Grindlay said.

Jackson said the African and African American Studies department is 80 percent back to normal. “The crew has worked really hard to get it up and running before the 19th when students walk through those doors,” she said.

While most students and staff will be unaffected by the Barker Center flood, for those that did experience it, the flood has changed their perspective on the more serious flooding caused in the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina.

“It gives me an appreciation of how difficult it is to dry out a building,” said Lichten, “and this was just a single section of a single building.”

“It was very peculiar and unsettling to watch something that you always experienced as being stable, something you could count on, fall apart like that,” Dalton said.

—Staff writer Nina L. Vizcarrondo can be reached at nvizcarr@fas.harvard.edu.