Legendary former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino died Thursday, the Boston Globe reported.

The 71-year-old had been battling with cancer. His spokeswoman said he was surrounded by family and friends.

Menino, a Democrat, won an unprecedented five mayoral elections in the Massachusetts capital, which he led from 1993 to 2013. During that time, the city's first Italian-American mayor managed to "shepherd Boston's economy and shape the skyline and the very identity of the city," the Boston Globe contended.

"An old-school politician whose own smarts owed more to the streets than the college classroom, Menino nonetheless helped turn Boston into a hub of 21st-century innovation," the newspaper said.

One minute he would recruit high-tech companies to the city, the next cut "a ribbon at a neighborhood burrito shop," according to Boston Glove.

Menino helped make his hometown the "vibrant, welcoming, world-class place it is today," the White House said in a statement.

"Bold, big-hearted, and Boston strong, Tom was the embodiment of the city he loved and led for more than two decades," President Barack Obama said.

Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Massachusetts senator, similarly praised Menino in a statement.

"Crime fell, population rose, the skyline became world-class, schools got better, the financial, academic, medical sectors all thrived and neighborhoods became more diverse," Kerry detailed, according to USA Today.

The mayor enjoyed huge popularity throughout his tenure and in 1997 and 2001 ran unopposed for re-election.

"Part of what endeared (him) to many lifelong Bostonians was his common-man persona," the Washington Post judged. "Often blunt-spoken and given to malapropisms ... he was thoroughly a creature of his city, innately attuned to its sardonic humor and idiosyncrasies."

Menino was born Dec. 27, 1942, to parents of Italian descent. He dropped out of Boston College but later earned an associate degree in business management from Chamberlayne Junior College. In 1988, while serving as a city councilor, he added a bachelor's degree in community planning from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Last year, Harvard University recognized Menino with an honorary doctorate, saying he had "shepherded the cradle of the American Revolution into the 21st century," the Boston Globe points out.

"I'm going to start wearing a bow tie pretty soon," the mayor quipped at the time.

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