Her paternal grandparents were Barbara (née Myers) Guggenheim and Meyer Guggenheim, the Swiss-born patriarch of the Guggenheim family. At the time of Gladys' death in 1980, she was the second last surviving grandchild of Meyer Guggenheim. The last was the Eleanor May, Dowager Countess of Castle Stewart, the widow of Arthur Stuart, 7th Earl Castle Stewart.[1] Her maternal grandparents were Lazarus Shloss and Barbara (née Kahnweiler) Shloss of Philadelphia.[4]
In 1940, Gladys was a co-founder of Gourmet magazine, of which she was assistant editor from inception to 1950. Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed her a Nutrition Commissioner for the New York Metropolitan area from 1943 to 1945 and again from 1947 to 1948. She was also a trustee Mount Sinai Hospital for more than fifty years and served as vice president of the board from 1951 to 1971.[1]
She was a trustee of the Institute on Manitoba and Science in Rensselaerville, New York, Chairman of the Mount Sinai Medical School and a trustee of the Roger Williams Straus Memorial Foundation. She served as Chairman of her parents' foundation, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation and was a member of the council New York State College Home Economics from 1943 to 1946.[1]
Florence Guggenheim Straus, who married Max A. Hart (1919–1999),[12] of the Hart Schaffner Marx clothing family, in 1947.[13]
Her husband suffered a heart attack while fishing near his lodge at Grahamsville and died at Liberty, New York, on July 28, 1957. Gladys died on March 14, 1980, in her Manhattan apartment.[1]
^Silverman, Al (2008). The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors. Truman Talley Books. pp. 17–40. ISBN978-0312-35003-1.