After his loss in the 1928 Senate race, Houghton returned to managing the Corning Glass Works. He was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, serving as Chairman until his death in 1941. He also was an original standing committee member of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and served as vice president of the American Peace Society, which publishes "World Affairs", the oldest U.S. journal on international relations.