Nearly two years after a fire destroyed Blair Hall’s roof and second and third floors, construction workers are smoothing fresh cement outside the doorways. The smell of fresh paint is overwhelming in the hallways lined with empty display cases.

Classes will be relocated to Blair Hall today after eight departments have been displaced since the fire on April 28, 2004.

The main doors of Blair aren’t functioning yet; a paper sign hangs that reads, “Emergency exit only.”

Blue and gray Rubbermaid tubs line the empty hallways. The floors are the same beige and green tile, but there is a lot more wood incorporated to the design, said Peggy Hickox, assistant to the dean of continuing education.

Hickox has been in Blair Hall since April 6. She hopes that the main doors will be functioning soon and that the fences surrounding the building will be removed.

The design is very different, said Gary Foster, chair of the sociology and anthropology department.

“Not an inch of space is wasted,” he said.

When the building was constructed in 1913, it was built for a specific purpose, Foster said. Over the years, that purpose has changed over time; there was wasted space, he said.

In the 1950s, the building underwent renovations. Those renovations weren’t satisfactory in the ’90s, he said. Now the building’s space is better utilized for its current use with all the departments and classes, he said.

Before the building was designed, Eastern’s Facilities Planning and Management department held meetings with all the displaced units to discuss, in length, what each department needed, Foster said.

The sociology/anthropology department needed a computer lab with at least 15 computers, compared with the old lab that had only six computers. Other requests included an additional faculty office.

“They delivered,” he said.

Foster did not immediately realize that there are seniors who will graduate in May in the sociology department who have never had a course in Blair.

If students were undeclared majors at the time of the fire and had not had any sociology classes, they have missed out on taking classes in Blair, he said.

He called Blair Hall the “campus home of sociology.”

Students have been forced to be nomadic, Foster said, and graduating students will only have that “home” experience for two weeks.

Foster said he does realize that some students and teachers might be inconvenienced by the move. But there is a connection to the department that some students would not have had otherwise, he said.

Not all programs are moving today, however.

The Gateway Program will not be moving into Blair Hall until May 8, said Pam Warpenburg, office systems assistant. Gateway is an alternative admissions program designed to provide access to underrepresented, disadvantaged students. Because students meet on a daily basis, their move is being postponed until May, Warpenburg said.

“We didn’t want to do that to the students,” she said.

She knows a lot of teachers are not happy about the move so close to the end of the year, she said.

Eastern President Lou Hencken said the reason for the early move is to iron out any problems that may arise with moving into the new facility. If there are problems, they can be solved over the summer.

Hickox just hopes students are excited to see what the building is like after all this time.

Although she doesn’t have much contact with on-campus students, it is going to be a lot noisier today, she said.

-Ashley Rueff contributed to this report

Biological sciences professor Gary Bella stands in the storage bin laden second floor of Blair Hall, reading the Bachelor in General Studies degree program directory Tuesday afternoon. (Eric Hiltner/The Daily Eastern News)

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