Together with her husband, she founded the weekly magazine The New Republic and the New School for Social Research in New York City.

[4] Records of Dorothy Payne Whitney in New York City reveal the extent of her philanthropic work.

[5] Together, they had three children: Straight died at the age of 38 of influenza during the 1918 pandemic while serving with the United States Army in France during World War I.

[11] They married in April 1925, and embarked on ambitious plans to recreate rural community life at Dartington Hall in Devon.

George Bernard Shaw called Dartington a "salon in the countryside": it attracted British intellectuals like Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, and the American constitutional psychologist William Sheldon.