Richard Ravitch, the former MTA chairman and lieutenant governor who is widely credited with helping New York emerge from its ’70s debt crisis, died at the age of 89 in Manhattan Sunday.

Ravitch was never elected to office, but had an immense influence on politics, transportation and civics in the state and city he called home.

“He was a steady, savvy, and brilliant leader and a public servant in the truest sense of the term,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement, confirming his death.

Born in 1933 to a Jewish Russian immigrant family in Brooklyn, Ravitch watched his father’s burgeoning HRH Construction Corporation shape the Manhattan skyline by erecting some of its most recognizable high-end apartment buildings, schools, museums and hospitals in addition to tens of thousands of affordable housing units, according to The Real Deal.

By 1960, Ravitch himself had taken the reins of the family company after attending the city’s prestigious Lincoln School and Fieldston School before graduating from Columbia University, earning a law degree at Yale University and serving in the Army, according to The New York Times.

He reportedly first became a political outsider when he invited Eleanor Roosevelt to a rally at Columbia for Democrat Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 presidential bid, only to find that local party leaders did not want to register new voters for fears of disrupting the mayoral race.

Ravitch’s work building low, middle-class and integrated housing complexes earned him a nod from President Lyndon Johnson to join the United States Commission on Urban Problems, and by the end of the 60s he was running the city’s Citizens Housing and Planning Council.

In 1975, Gov. Hugh Carey tapped him to run the New York State Urban Development Corporation, which he saved from collapse by reorganizing it as an economic development arm of the executive branch by convincing lawmakers to issue new debt backed by federal appropriations.

That model was copied by the Municipal Assistance Corporation, which assumed New York City’s debt and helped the city avoid bankruptcy in 1975 thanks to an 11th-hour negotiation with the teachers’ union spearheaded by Ravitch.

With the city one day away from defaulting, he persuaded union bosses to not backtrack on their agreement to buy $200 million in municipal bonds with pension funds and convinced Washington officials to keep the banks open late so the city could make a payment, a Times report said.

Before the innovative solutions, the state’s coffers were so depleted that civil servants were being paid in scripts, or IOUs, that Albany would have to repay to the banks later, according to Stephen Harausz, a former senior economic advisor in Carey’s office.

“That was key to solving the city’s problems and the state’s problems because the bonds were worth something. Now, you had a guarantee that your money was safe,” Harausz said.

In 1979, Carey tapped Ravitch to chair the troubled Metropolitan Transportation Agency, which he was credited for shoring up during his four-year tenure thanks to his plan to sell buses and trains to private companies who would lease them back to the state agency in order to receive tax breaks.

Ravitch did not accept a salary for the position and had to wear a bullet proof vest and be accompanied by security after receiving death threats during the 1980 transit strike. One of his guards was later shot during an attack at his office.

“Dick Ravitch, for everybody in the transportation business, was giant. He was the chairman of the MTA at maybe the lowest moment in the history of at least the subway system, and certainly the mass transit system in New York,” said predecessor MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber in a statement.

“In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he led the beginnings of the turnaround of our great mass transit system,” Lieber continued.

“He was one of the reasons that I got excited about transit, it was the area that was most representative of New York’s incredible revival, starting in the late 1970s. And in many ways, he is one of the fathers of the mass transit system that we have today, which we celebrate in so many different ways and try to continue to improve in his spirit.”

After returning to the private sector, he ran for mayor in 1989, but finished third in the Democratic primaries, which were won by David Dinkins.

He returned to public service in 2009 when Gov. David Paterson – who was elevated to office following a sex scandal – appointed him to be his deputy after a coup in Albany brought the state senate to a standstill.

During his tenure as lieutenant governor, Ravitch once again elected to not receive a salary, and was tasked with influencing the state budgeting process, with mixed results.

Paterson told The Post he was saddened after hearing of his number two’s death.

“I picked Ravitch as my lieutenant governor because he helped save the city from bankruptcy in 1975,” Paterson told The Post Monday.

He said Ravitch’s experience and insights were valuable as they wrestled with a fiscal crisis following the Great Recession of 2008.

Paterson said Ravitch was considered apolitical and was respected by Republicans as well as Democrats.

“Dick worked really hard and he believed in his work. He cared about the financial structure of the city and state. He was involved in the policies we made,” Paterson said.

The ex-governor said Ravitch was a great storyteller, recalling that Ravitch knew a couple who  provided lodging to Martin Luther King at their home when in New York instead of having the civil rights leader stay at a hotel.

“Dick was an inadvertent historian,” Paterson said, echoing remarks made by Albany’s current leader.

“Dick Ravitch was a titan of New York’s civic world who left an indelible mark on our State, and he will be greatly missed,” Hochul’s statement continued.

“As Governor, I greatly appreciated Dick’s wisdom and thoughtful advice, and I know all New Yorkers have benefited from his contributions. I join his wife Kathy, his loved ones, friends, and all New Yorkers who knew him in mourning his passing and remembering his tremendous achievements.”

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that the city owed Ravitch “a great debt of gratitude” for his stewardship of the budget and transit system.

“As a businessman whose management competence and expertise proved that a political outsider could be a successful public leader, he may have also helped pave the way for my 2001 run for mayor,” the three-term bipartisan mayor said.

The thrice married Ravitch was reportedly survived by his wife Kathy, two sons from his first marriage, three stepdaughters and 13 grandchildren.