Top Harvard administrators continued to earn salaries in the $200,000 range last year, as they wooed star professors to the University by offering them six-figure salaries and generous signing bonuses.

President Neil L. Rudenstine made $207,541 in salary from Harvard during his first year here, according to documents recently filed with the Massachusetts Office of Public Charities. This puts him in the mid-range of Ivy League presidents. Former President Derek C. Bok received $213,389 in salary during his last year on the job, so Rudenstine made slightly less money than his predecessor.

DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, and Wilson Professor of Business Administration Gerald Zaltman, who teaches marketing at the Business School, both cashed in on their new jobs.

Gates earned $125,000 in salary, and also received $151,920 in "other compensation." Phyllis Keller, associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for academic affairs, said the "other compensation" was a one-time housing and relocation allowance sometimes awarded to new faculty members.

"We try to help new faculty acquire housing here comparable to their housing where they are coming from," Keller said.

Keller said such housing allowances vary according to factors such as where the professor is moving from. Gates came from Duke University in Durham North Carolina, where housing is inexpensive relative to prices in the Boston area.

Zaltman, who came to Harvard from the University of Pittsburgh Business School, taught a course this past year on "new product decision making." His decision to move to Harvard earned him a first-year salary of $177,219, plus an allowance of $25,429.

Veteran Harvard deans Daniel C. Tosteson '44 (of the Medical School) and John H. McArthur (of the Busi- ness School) continued to do well for themselves. Tosteson earned $276,060 in salary, while McArthur was paid $198,708.

Tosteson's pay is up a healthy almost 7 percent from the $258,000 he earned the year before, while McArthur's raise was much smaller, up about 2.7 percent from $193,500. These raises came in a year when the size of a pay raise for the 3,500 members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers was an issue that brought tense contract negotiations and an eventual three-year deal for raises in the four to five percent range each year.

Top Harvard salaries reported on the forms included those of Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles ($187,500), Vice President for Finance Robert H. Scott ($170,000), Vice President for Administration Sally H. Zeckhauser ($166,320) and Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50 ($163,240).

Gates was in New York yesterday and unavailable for comment. Zaltman was out of town and did not return a message left on his office phone. Scott did not return a phone call. All non-profit organizations are required by law to file the names and salaries of their officers and their five highest paid employees with the Office of Public Charities in the Massachusetts secretary of state's office.

Compensation figures for Harvard's money managers were filed months earlier on a separate tax return for the Harvard Management Company. One endowment official, Dave Mittelman, earned more than $1.2 million in salary and bonuses. Company President Jack R. Meyer reaped $739,000 in fiscal 1992