Everyone knew him as soft-spoken, orderly “Larry,” armed with an incisive wit instead of bluster or fanfare — and as St. Paul’s first “strong mayor,” Larry got the work done.

Lawrence Cohen, the only man in the city’s history to serve as mayor, Ramsey County commissioner and chief district judge, died early Sunday of cancer, family members said. He was 83.

While Cohen rarely made huge headlines, many saw the job he was tasked with — and succeeded at — as monumental. And thus, the lack of headlines as a boon.

“He had this overwhelming job,” said Ruby Hunt, who sat on city council when Cohen was mayor from 1972 to 1976. “What he started with was not conducive to a modern-day city.”

Before Cohen, the mayor’s power was limited to a single vote on city council. Mayors of old headed no departments (each city council member had one), oversaw no budgets (a comptroller did), and had little to no planning capability.

Cohen took the reins under a new system instituted by his predecessor and phased it in with little notable fuss. On top of that, he was able to navigate the dissection of St. Paul into 17 district councils with a minimum of bleeding.

“That was very hard work — what are the boundaries of Summit-University? I wasn’t involved in it, thank God,” said former St. Paul mayor George Latimer, who succeeded Cohen in office. “By the time I became mayor, it was all already in place.”

Cohen first ran for mayor in 1971 with the DFL endorsement against Robert Ferderer, in a low-turnout race notable for its relative civility. He won handily, touting a tax relief plan and urging development of the downtown riverfront.

Much was made at the time that Cohen was the first Jewish mayor of a city considered largely Irish Catholic.

The soft-spoken 39-year-old attorney was in many ways the polar opposite of his pugnacious predecessor, Charles McCarty, known for shouting at council meetings and cruising around town in his “Supercar,” replete with flashing lights, a police scanner, a telephone and a device to change traffic lights from red to green.

Asked whether McCarty’s style had put St. Paul on the map, Cohen replied, “Hurricanes put Miami on the map, too.”

But Cohen got a big bureaucratic boost from McCarty: The city was slated to switch to a “strong mayor” form of government on the day Cohen was sworn in, scrapping its 118-year-old charter to give the top position more administrative power.

What would he do with it, he was asked when election results were in.

“The image of St. Paul needs a great deal of polish. … Downtown St. Paul used to be described as a nice residential area, but now it’s decaying,” he said, at a time when energy seemed to be shifting to the suburbs.

In the end, that development didn’t come until years after Cohen was out of office.

But Cohen’s organizational tenor created a high bar for those who followed him. He instituted weekly cabinet meetings for department heads, scheduled a “citizen’s day” each month where constituents could pop in without appointments and kept quiet order during what could potentially have been a bureaucratic nightmare.

“He worked with people and through people, rather than talking down to them,” Latimer said. “He had this marvelous, infectious sense of humor and wit, and he was very kind.”

A self-described environmentalist, Cohen pushed to get on the Metropolitan Airports Commission, where he eventually served for 11 years. Even back in his 30s, he was counsel for the Minnesota Environmental Control Citizens Association, a militant antipollution group whose board he had to resign from when running for mayor.

A Pioneer Press endorsement during the following election in 1974 backhandedly complimented Cohen’s style as “businesslike and unspectacular” — pointing out that the fact that he oversaw such a huge bureaucratic reorganization “with a minimum of fanfare is to his credit.”

When Cohen ran again, it was against primary challenger Rosalie Butler — and civility fell somewhat by the wayside, with the two exchanging attacks over city finances.

But there were few meaty issues, and Cohen went on to win the DFL primary and — again, by another light-turnout vote — the election against Independent council member Dean Meredith.

During his second term, there was somewhat more friction between Cohen and the city council concerning his role.

“I don’t see myself as a little old man wearing a visor and sitting behind his desk,” he said in reply to suggestions he stick to the role of program administration, rather than advance proposals of his own.

Halfway through his second term, Cohen surprised many with the announcement that he wouldn’t seek a third term, citing personal, rather than political reasons.

“I can say there are few jobs more burdensome and grinding, and, at the same time, rewarding and satisfying,” Cohen said at the time. “The simple truth is I no longer wanted to be mayor.”

Cohen’s exit was a quiet one.

Said nephew and godson Alan Margoles: “He really did want to be with his children more. One of the things that made him a great mayor was he was an incredibly hard worker — 12 to 14 hours a day. And he was never home.”

Current St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, son of a state senator, said he first met Cohen as a child and kept in touch through the years. The men took part in a panel discussion of past and current mayors last year at the St. Paul Hotel.

Coleman said Cohen was a kind and gentle spirit, whether guiding young lawyers from the bench or advising young politicians as a seasoned leader. And his word carried great weight.

“To be the leader of county government, city government and the judiciary is a hell of a record of accomplishment for one person,” Coleman said.

Born in 1933 and raised in St. Paul during the Depression, Cohen graduated from Central High School and later the University of Minnesota’s law school. His first notable success in politics started in 1965 at the age of 31, when he was elected chairman of the DFL’s 4th Congressional District.

But he’d been active in the DFL since his teens, serving on multiple campaign committees, getting involved in the civil rights movement — and running unsuccessfully for a state House seat in the then-conservative Highland Park neighborhood the year before, losing by just 70 votes.

“Larry was always deeply involved in politics. Involved in the civil rights movement in college, head of the Young Democrats,” said nephew Margoles, noting that later, as a judge, “Larry never got black robes disease. He never thought of himself as better.”

Still, he practiced law in the offices of Ruttenberg, Orren, Griswold and Cohen, was elected Ramsey County Commissioner in 1970, and ran for mayor two years later.

After his two stints as mayor, Cohen continued to practice law out of an office in Bloomington. In 1988, he was appointed a Ramsey County District judge by Gov. Rudy Perpich.

There, he made notable inroads with communities of color and persuaded legislators to give the courts more money, establishing restorative-justice and interpreter-certification programs for the court.

He spent 14 years on the bench before retiring in 2002 at the age of 68.

Cohen is survived by his wife, Kathi Donnelly-Cohen, and five children.

The family is planning a service and shiva at the Temple of Aaron in St. Paul, 616 Mississippi River Boulevard.