Client Services Manager John Mitch of the Harvard News Office says that the number of visitors taking official University tours--a tiny fraction of the actual tourist load--climbs sharply in the summer, with six to eight 40-person tours on an average day.

Visitors pick up again in autumn, as "leaf-peepers" on their way to rural New England stop in the Square on their way north. But once winter sets in, tourism is usually frozen until spring.

"Come January, February, you could shoot a gun in here and not hit anybody--there's no one here," says Paul R. Corcoran of The Harvard Shop on JFK St. (the source of complimentary shirts for first-years).

From his station outside Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, a Spare Change vendor who would identify himself only as "Greg D." said that all the tourists "checked out" of the Square for this year sin late October.

He says that, despite the ethnic shift and large groups of today's tourists, he has had no problems working with them.

"They come in big groups, but I can communicate with anybody," he says.

Why Harvard?

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III says Harvard's tourist load grew as a result of publicity from the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 and John F. Kennedy '40, but he feels there is a simpler reason for the increase in visitors.

"What is responsible for this increase?" Epps says. "I think the single biggest factor is that when you arrive at Logan Airport from Europe, you watch a film on Massachusetts, which has a section on universities, and the only university shown is Harvard."

Rafael A. Torres, owner of Don Quijote tours, which specializes in tours of Boston for Romance-language-speaking visitors, says that foreign visitors are interested in seeing Harvard long before they reach Logan.

"People from overseas have a very high image of Harvard; they want to walk around in Harvard Yard because they have a picture of it in their minds," Torres says. "They want to touch it, feel it and take pictures of it. About 90 percent of my clients want to see Harvard."

Epps says that Harvard is the only U.S. institution of higher learning with an international reputation. He says he saw first-hand the power of the Harvard name abroad.

"I've traveled around the world twice, to China, Japan," Epps says. "Even in the remotest villages, you said Harvard and they understood, and that was in the 60s."

Mark A. Griffiths, of Melbourne, Australia, says he made a stop at Harvard part of a vacation to the American Northeast because of its international academic reputation.

"I'd just heard about it overseas," Griffiths says. "It has a great reputation as a center for learning, but I didn't appreciate it as a center of architecture until I got here."