CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Julia Child was a regular customer, scouring the Out of Town News kiosk here for German and Italian cooking magazines.

John Kenneth Galbraith came to the kiosk every day to buy Le Monde.

And in 1975, a young man named Paul Allen picked up a copy of Popular Electronics with a picture of a boxy personal computer on the cover; he shared it with his friend Bill Gates, and, well, the rest is history.

For decades, the cluttered kiosk has catered to the eclectic, ink-stained needs of the famous, the soon-to-be famous and 10 million others who pass through Harvard Square each year.

But fewer people are buying newspapers and magazines these days, and the kiosk’s life as a purveyor of print publications is almost certainly coming to an end. The powerful Harvard Square Business Association wants the newsstand out so it can clean up the square — or, in its phrase, “polish the trophy.”