“To be in the same place for over 50 years is quite something,” announces Daisy Soros, elegantly perched on a chair in her Fifth Avenue living room on a balmy June morning. She is talking about her beloved home in Nantucket—Siasconset, more commonly known as “Sconset,” to be exact. Since 1969, from late June through Labor Day, Soros, 94, along with various members of her family, have decamped to this former fishing village on the eastern side of the island. There, among the tiny cottages covered with salt-licked sea roses, the garden paths, the beaches, and the bogs, Soros and her family have established a fairytale refuge. While Soros lives in the main house she built with her late husband Paul in the early ’80s, her sons, Peter, a financier, and Jeffrey, a film producer, reside in a pair of adjacent properties with their children and grandchildren.

“It’s like no other place I’ve been,” says Soros, who was born in Bratislava, raised in Hungary and Austria, went to school in Switzerland for two years, and then moved to New York in 1950 to study at Columbia University. In the city, at the International House (a private residency program established 100 years ago by the Rockefeller family for graduates), she met Paul Soros, the famed businessman and philanthropist. Together, over their 62 years of marriage, they traveled the world, enjoyed the company of everyone from political leaders (Bill Clinton) to Hollywood royalty (Robert Redford), and worked diligently on their various charities and causes. And yet, Nantucket was always the place they were happiest. “It’s the vegetation and the sky and just the simple life,” Soros says. “I find it very soothing.”


The beach leading up to Great Point Lighthouse, a favorite of Soros’s.

There are no stoplights on Nantucket, and Sconset is even sleepier. There are very few businesses: a post office, the Unitarian Church (where Paul is buried), and the market that sells everything from baskets to ice cream cones. “I wanted a place where my kids could bike alone to get an ice cream after the beach. Or go with their friends to the Sconset Casino and play tennis or put on a play,” says Soros. And while her children have cultivated lifelong friendships, so has Soros, whose luncheons and dinners are a coveted ticket on the island. She prefers substantive conversation on topics ranging from foreign policy to fine art rather than society drivel, and her guests reflect that. Her dinner table is typically a heady mix of ex-ambassadors, museum directors, financial titans, and contemporary writers. Soros may live in the upper echelons of extreme luxury, but there is nothing frivolous about her. While she seems to have traveled everywhere, ultimately her Cheever-style summers have been the perfect antidote to her jam-packed schedule in Manhattan and Palm Beach, where she winters these days.

Even in her tenth decade, Soros is still very active with many of the city’s most prestigious foundations. She currently sits on the boards of the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Foreign Policy Association, and the New York Philharmonic, as well as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where she is now director emeritus. The morning of our visit, she was working on a speech that she would deliver later that afternoon at a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Opera. (The night before, she had been out late for her daughter-in-law’s birthday dinner downtown. Earlier that week, she had attended the ballet.)

In 1997, she and her husband created a trust called the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which provides grants to immigrants and children of immigrants for graduate study for two years. The trust has endowed nearly 800 fellows across the globe since its inception and, out of all her charities, this one seems to be closest to her heart. Every year, she personally calls each of the recipients to deliver the good news.

And then there is Nantucket. “Vhat do you want to know?” Soros asks me, her lovely, throaty Hungarian accent still coming through. For the next few hours, she shared thoughtful family memories and salty yarns of her beloved summer home.

MAURA EGAN: How did you end up in Nantucket?

DAISY SOROS: We were living in New Canaan, Connecticut, and we had friends there who had told us about it. We had been going to the Hamptons in the ’60s when it was potato fields and rabbits running around. So, when we were looking for where to stay in Nantucket, half of my friends said, “You have to stay in Sconset,” and the other half said, “You need to stay in town.” I said, “What’s the difference?” I’ll never forget it. There was a ladies’ department store known as Peck & Peck on Fifth Avenue, and they sold A-line dresses with your monogram on the front. That was what the ladies in town wore to go to the yacht club. And in Sconset, people wore blue jeans and no heels and went to the Casino. So, I chose Sconset.

ME: When did you put down permanent roots here?

DS: We rented our first house in 1969. The house was named Bedlam Cottage. My boys were 6 and 10 at the time, so the name suited us perfectly. The summer was a success, as we all loved it. It was the beginning of our time in Nantucket. We finally bought land in 1979 to build a house right near the ocean on Baxter Road. It was impossible to buy a house back then because nobody was selling. Everyone kept their houses for their children. We closed on the land over Labor Day, and a few months later Paul was at a work event at the Carlyle Hotel and met a man who also had just bought property in Nantucket. My husband asked where. The man said, “In Sconset.” So, Paul asked, “Where in Sconset?” Then the man said, “On the bluff on Baxter Road.” Now Paul was getting nervous, thinking we might have purchased the same plot. The property has two lots, one next to the ocean and another across the street. The man said, “I bought the one across the street and some nut bought the one next to the ocean.” I guess because he thought it was too expensive. I think it was like $100,000 at the time. So, Paul said, “Meet the nut!” We had some difficulty when we started to build. Our architect had a drinking problem, and he kept sending us designs where the toilet overlooked the ocean and the living room overlooked the road. We finally accepted a design. It looks like a ski chalet, with an A-frame.

ME: Do you recall your first summers on the island?

DS: We loved it. We were lucky that we could join the clubs easily, like the Sankaty Head Golf Club. Now you have to be like two generations in. And the Tennis Club, which was great because my husband was a very good player. Of course, there was the Sconset Casino where the kids put on plays. Jeffrey was in a Chekhov play when he was about 10. Everyone asked me how Jeffrey was, and I said, “It was like Jeffrey in our living room.” It was very low-key and like a small town. The people were not unsophisticated, but they lived an unsophisticated life when they were here. There was a big beach life. And lots of ladies gossiping that somebody was having an affair with the tennis pro, someone spied them together, now the wife has moved out, and all that type of garbage.

ME: Do you have a favorite beach?

DS: Nobadeer Beach used to be my favorite, but it’s idiotic now because it’s next to the airport and you can hear all the planes above you. People don’t go there anymore, but I don’t know where they go because I don’t want to be seen in a bathing suit! I once had a house guest from Vienna who basically disappeared every afternoon while he was staying with us. I had no idea where he went. I finally discovered that there was a nude beach about a half a mile from Nobadeer, and that’s where he would go. I think there is still a nude beach, but it’s in a different location.

ME: You are known to be an excellent hostess.

DS: My husband Paul called me a “socialist” because I liked the social life. I like parties, but they need to be very low-key. We did a lot of cocktails on the lawn. I once had the musicians from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia come to play outside for an afternoon, but it was too humid for their instruments, so we had to move into my house with about 50 people. I’d rather entertain outside when it’s that big. I also used to like to do sundowners on the beach or go late at night in August when there are a million stars in the sky.

I was a very good cook at one time. When I was an only child growing up in Hungary, my family was very social, so I used to watch the cooks prepare in the kitchen. I also learned to cook when I attended the École Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland. I used to make schnitzel, chicken paprikash, and palacsinta—the Hungarian crêpes—but not anymore. I had a French chef for 18 years who made incredible French cuisine, including delicious soufflés for dessert. But I don’t like to be la-di-da. I just want it to be delicious and fun. I used to have something called “sips and soup,” where I just served wine and clam chowder to guests.

ME: You also like to keep it lively.

DS: You know, I have to make a lot of speeches and appearances at ladies’ luncheons in New York for my different charities, and I just despise the term ladies’ luncheon. I like the men there. I like to rock the boat a little at my parties. At my luncheons and dinners in Nantucket, I try to have a maximum of eight people because I feel like you really get to talk to people with that number.

For the last few years, I have set it up so that guests can discuss whatever they want through the main course, and then I ask a general question. The last one was quite controversial. I asked, “Do you think we should support Ukraine versus Russia?” But I also might ask what book influenced you growing up or, if your life was made into a movie, who would play you?

Everyone is like, “Ugh,” at first, but then they start to tune into the question and really start to talk. I like to get to know people and what makes them tick. I don’t want to talk about golf scores or what you paid for something. I like to mix it up. I like to have the Trumpies with the non-Trumpies. I’m European. We always had controversial conversations back in the day, whether it was about Communism or Catholicism. But we were always civilized. Americans are more emotional. They take it more personally.

ME: I know you have hosted many people over your 50 years in Sconset. Do you have any rules?

DS: Years ago, I used to host three couples from New Canaan every summer. I decided to put up a cardboard sheet in the house and give them stars for good behavior. But if they received too many demerits, they weren’t invited back. Some of them weren’t asked back!

I once hosted the conductor Lorin Maazel, and he was the personification of a composer—he was elegant, charming, and good-looking. My husband Paul, who was always low-key, remarked that the entire time Lorin stayed with us, he never asked us one question about ourselves.

My son Jeffrey once brought Warren Beatty to my house. Jeffrey produces movies, and Warren was being honored by a group of screenwriters on the island. He was a piece of work. He was telling dirty jokes the whole time. I made him lunch. His wife, Annette Bening, was there. She went swimming in the ocean and then came into the house in just her bathing suit. I had to give her some clothes at one point.

ME: What has changed the most in Nantucket?

DS: Where we are has changed the least. We don’t have a huge property. We never had a pool because that was seen as tacky back in the day. Everyone used to drive wood-paneled Jeeps. There were no Ferraris like today. We used to go to the Wauwinet Hotel to square dance and drink wine. There were mice running around. Now it’s very fancy. I think it looks a little like the Bloomingdale’s furniture department inside. It’s the same with the Chicken Box. It was a dive bar where we would go to listen to jazz and dance. It’s not the same these days. I remember when I got my first Nantucket lightship basket in 1970, I didn’t use it for a year. I kept it in the window in the sunlight so it would look aged. Anything new then was looked down upon.

ME: What keeps you coming back?

DS: Well, we all really love it. If my sons and their wives and children didn’t want to come every summer, it would be a very different thing. But for two months I have my whole family there. There are few places like it.

You can find this story and more in PALMER On the Road, available here.