The Witch of Harvard. . .

Bertha B. Cohen, millionaires , lies buried 30 miles south of her old Cambridge real estate empire on a quiet hill in Sharon Memorial Park. She lies there because her lawyer, Maurice Simon, "liked the view."

Local magnate Max Wasserman has recently purchased her estate, but Cambridge residents have been slow to forget the legend of "the witch of Harvard Square." People don't forget immigrant assistant milliners who earn over $4 million in 40 years.

Henry H. Cutler '29, Harvard manager for Taxes, Insurance, and Real Estate, said. "We [Harvard] never really had any direct dealings with her, but it was a well-known fact that she never did one thing to improve her properties. She felt that it was up to the tenants to do it."

Bertha Cohen died five years ago, with over $1 million in her checking account. She owned property and stocks totaling almost $3 million. Her properties included such familiar landmarks as the Cambridge Tower of Pizza, Cahaly's Delicatessen, University Typewriter Co. and Margaret's Dress Shop.

Born in 1898, Cohen came to Boston in 1905 and began work as an assistant in a millinery shop in Roxbury. Shortly afterward, she opened her own shop, dubbed "Mademoiselle Bertha."

Bertha's hat business must have done well, because by 1920 she had purchased her first building, Strathcona Hall, located at 992 Memorial Drive.

Living by herself in that building, the small-boned, five-foot one-inch Cohen immediately made negotiations for her next building. She bought property in Boston along Commonwealth Ave. in Roxbury, and Malden, but the bulk of her investments were located in Cambridge.

Throughout her meteoric rise in the real estate business, Cohen continued to live in her first building, Strathcona Hall. She did her own cleaning work there and made numerous trips to just-vacated apartments to rummage for leftovers.

According to one sharp-eyed neighbor, she would pick up catsup and ammonia bottles, old plates-anything left by previous tenants. She told the neighbors that she had several warehouses full of such old junk.

Bertha never posed for any photographs, and none of her relatives have any pictures. She kept to herself, never married, and bore no children. And she died without a will, leaving a complicated probate mess for her distant relatives to untangle.

In her small cluttered office in Strathcona Hall, one of her few decorative touches was a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte.