Charlotte Spiegel, a civic leader and Democratic
politician from the Lower East Side who created
New York’s pioneering, lifesaving window guard
program in the 1970s, died on Friday in
Manhattan. She was 92.
Her death, at NYU Langone Medical Center, was
confirmed by her daughter Maura Spiegel.
As director of the health department’s Window
Falls Prevention Program, Ms. Spiegel
transformed what was a modest but promising
publicity campaign, called Children Can’t Fly,
into a formal health code requirement that
landlords provide window guards to tenants in
apartments occupied by children age 10 and
under.
It was widely described as the first window
guard requirement in the nation.
At first, the health department bought tens of
thousands of window guards at $3 apiece and
distributed them free of charge. When it ran out
of money, it shifted the burden to building
owners.
Landlords were originally required to install the
guards only if a tenant requested them. They
were later made responsible for determining
whether tenants were eligible for the guards and,
if so, installing them.
“If a child falls, the landlord is liable,” Ms.
Spiegel said, even if the landlord was the city’s
own Housing Authority, which she accused of
“foot dragging” in complying with the window
guard regulations.
In 1976, when the regulations were enacted, 217
children were injured in window falls and 24
died. In 2013, according to the health
department, six were injured and one died
falling from windows that should have been
equipped with guards.
A decade before the window guard campaign,
Ms. Spiegel found herself in the political
vanguard. In 1963, when Edward N. Costikyan
announced that he was retiring as the leader of
the Manhattan Democratic organization,
historically known as Tammany Hall, Ms. Spiegel
filled in as the acting New York County leader.
She was then elected chairwoman of the county’s
executive committee. She was the first woman to
hold each post.
Charlotte Sandra Neuman was born in
Manhattan on March 22, 1922, to Morris Neuman
and the former Ida Mitnitsky, a seamstress. An
uncle was treasurer of a Lower East Side
Democratic club. She was 15 when she was
admitted to Hunter College, having already
graduated from Washington Irving High School.
She went on to receive a master’s degree in
English from Columbia University, where she
overcame her painful shyness.
In 1944, she married Samuel A. Spiegel, who
represented the Lower East Side as an
assemblyman before being elected to the State
Supreme Court and to the Surrogate’s Court. He
died in 1977. Besides her daughter Maura, Ms.
Spiegel is survived by another daughter, Jill
Spiegel, and two grandchildren.
Ms. Spiegel taught in the same elementary school
that she had attended, Public School 188 on the
Lower East Side, worked briefly for a public
relations company and was a partner in a small
interior decorating firm before she got involved
in civic groups, like the Grand Street Settlement
House and the League of Women Voters, and
Democratic politics.
In 1985, when she was 63, Ms. Spiegel was on a
cruise with the ship Achille Lauro when it was
hijacked in the Mediterranean by Palestinian
terrorists. She was one of the so-called beach
people who vacationed in the same condominium
complex on the Jersey Shore and was among 11
of them who had taken the cruise together.
Ms. Spiegel was one of five members of the group
who were not on board when the hijacking took
place; they were on a bus tour in Egypt at the
time, from Alexandria to Port Said. Her
childhood friend Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a
wheelchair, was shot and thrown overboard. His
wife, Marilyn, survived the hijacking and died a
year later.
Maura Spiegel recalled that her mother was
appointed to the health department directorship
by Mayor Abraham D. Beame , after she had
worked on his 1973 campaign and lost the
clubhouse district leadership she had held for
nearly two decades.
In government, Ms. Spiegel discovered how much
she could still accomplish, even during a fiscal
crisis, her daughter said. Under Children Can’t
Fly, her window guard program, reported falls
declined by 50 percent from 1973 to 1975.
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