This is the conclusion of a two part feature. Part I chronicled the rise of Edward A. Crane '35 as an all powerful Cambridge political boss who, ironically, came to power, because of reformers changes in the city government.

Harvard stayed relatively helpless to get in on the city power and development game constantly stymied by people like Crane and Bertha Cohen, a reclusive, eccentric land-owner.

Bertha Cohen died in 1965, leaving no will and few close relatives. A distant nephew was named executor of the estate after a five-year court battle and he quickly disposed of the property on the open market. Harvard and developer Max Wasserman, a close friend and high school chum of Eddie Crane's, both bid on the property, with Wasserman coming out the winner.

After spending $5 million on the property, Wasserman had more in mind than the soon-to-be-evicted tenants on many of his property holdings. He wanted high-rise condominiums erected on his land and to get permission to build them he needed not just down-zoning, but a whole new zoning charter. Wasserman applied for and was granted the unprecedented changes by the Zoning Board of Appeals. The Boston Phoenix reported in 1971 that Crane pushed Wasserman's projects so vigorously that he "forced out a member of the planning board that opposed a Wasserman zoning request." The Phoenix went on to show that Crane got some patronage in return--some of his building associates cashed in when Wasserman built his luxury housing in a few areas that sorely needed low-cost construction.

It was not the first time that Crane removed land from the low cost housing market. In a rare move for a university, MIT's Chairman James Killian complied with a Crane request that he help develop Technology Square, now the fourth largest property taxpayer in the city, but partly built on land where low-cost housing was before.

It was also Killian who engineered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deal with Crane that was supposed to bring in $60 million worth of space facilities into a now vacant Kendall Square site. The federal government dropped the proposal in 1969.

But even as Crane was working out the Kendall Square deal with Killian and NASA in the early sixties, there were rumblings from within the City Council--rumblings that Crane for the most part failed to detect.

Joseph DeGuiglielmo '29--who had been in partnership with Crane even when Crane threw John Atkinson out of the city manager post and replaced him with a hand-picked selection, John J. Curry '19--was assembling a coalition of Cambridge Civic Association reformers and independents who were getting weary of Crane's one-man rule.

DeGuiglielmo, now a Boston Municipal Court judge, says he can't talk about his role in Cambridge politics, but he can still be seen sipping coffee every morning with his brethren over at Wursthaus, as he has for the last 20 years. Although Frank Cardullo, proprietor of Wursthaus and klatch-master of the Rinky Dinks, a club consisting of several Middlesex and Suffolk County judges and a handful of registrars, insists that the conversation is lighthearted political fun, it is widely held that DeGuiglielmo plotted the coup that would overthrew John Curry in 1966 and place himself in as city manager, while eating with friends at Wursthaus.

Although once in as city manager DeGuiglielmo wasn't successful in sustaining his coalition and subsequently lost his council support in the ensuing election, Crane's power remained battered from the ambush by his political friends. Crane told The Crimson in 1966, after losing the fiercest political battle in the city's history: "I don't get shook up over these things, the city won't blow up, the sun won't rise in the west.... I've been through these things before. It's all part of the game." But this time it was all over for the Cambridge kingpin. He stayed on to run for re-election as a councilman again in 1967, but failed to finish in the top three for the first time in a number of years and retired to his practice rather than run again in 1971.

"Crane had been the dominant figure in the city for years, no question about it," says current City Manager James L. Sullivan, rehired this year after serving three years at the tail-end of the Crane regime. "But he ceased to be the dominant figure when Joe DeGuiglielmo replaced Curry."

Crane left the city in a mass of confusion. His short-sighted policies, designed for immediate growth, no matter what cost, and for low taxes, ignored a crucial housing shortage and a dearth of blue collar jobs. His alliance with James Killian brought in public sector jobs and suburban white collar research work. But the land where these jobs were located was tax-exempt, of little value to the tax base.

But most important, Crane left a political, social and economic vacuum so large that no one person could fill it. Ever since the Crane-DeGuiglielmo split the city council has suffered from a political divisiveness that renders it helpless in coping with Cambridge's major problems. The shattered body has already gone through twice as many city managers since Crane left than it did in all the years that he reigned. Chamber of Commerce President Robert Jones criticizes the council for playing politics above all other concerns. "City Council just doesn't have a leader in the crowd. Many are unhappy as it is but others just revel in it," Jones says.

The leadership crisis stems in part from the ability of councilors to win re-election by appealing directly to a small group of constituents. "You've basically got two types," a Harvard government professor says. "One is the Al Vellucci type, who offers symbolic jokes at Harvard's expense, and the other is the cult figure like Saundra Graham, who has a personal following and an acme of influence in a neighborhood but can't really put a coalition together."

To ex-Councilwoman Cornelia Wheeler, who claims that she received all her political knowledge from Crane, mayor and consistent vote-getter Walter J. Sullivan is an old-style politician: "It is discouraging to walk in a parade with Walter. Everyone who sees him says 'Hi, Walter.' I thought I should have hired a claque to yell 'Hi Connie,' just to march with him because he is so popular." But does she believe he could lead the city coalition needed to make things move? "No," says Wheeler. "I don't think the businessmen would rally around him."