Lawrence Van Gelder, who worked in the newsrooms of five New York City newspapers over 55 years, most of them as a critic, columnist, and editor at The New York Times, died Friday of cancer at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.

Mr. Van Gelder was only 15 when he first sought a job in journalism, as a copy boy at The Times. The Times told him he was too young.

He went on to graduate from Columbia College and later from Columbia Law School but held on to his early ambition, choosing newspapers over the law at a time when the city supported more than half a dozen.

He joined the tabloid paper The Daily Mirror as a reporter in 1955 and worked there until it went out of business in 1963. Then, as a rewrite man, he moved to The New York World-Telegram and Sun and then worked for its short-lived successor, The World Journal Tribune, the product of its merger with two other papers, which ceased publication in 1967.

After a brief stint at The Daily News, The Times hired him at age 34. He would accumulate more than 5,200 bylines as a reporter, film critic, and obituary writer, and later worked as an editor on the culture and metropolitan desks. He retired in 2010.