A warm aria to family
It’s fitting that Hillary Danner is raising her son and daughter in a century-old Arts and Crafts home in the Sycamore Grove area of Highland Park. The timber-and-stone residence, built in 1904, has a grand staircase, a huge covered porch and a curious pedigree, a hint of which comes in the giant “La Boheme” inscription on the wood panel of the living room fireplace.
The inscription has special meaning to Danner, who grew up in an 1869 Victorian in Englewood, N.J., restored by her parents, actor Harry Danner and opera director Dorothy Danner. Harry, a tenor, coincidentally performed in productions of “La Bohème” nationwide, and when Hillary was young, she was cast in the opera, playing Emma.
The Liddell “La Bohème” House, as it’s called, is regularly part of the Highland Park Heritage Trust’s bimonthly home tour. Through her research, Danner discovered that her house was constructed a few years after “La Bohème” was first staged in L.A., and it’s quite possible that the opera may have inspired the builder or the original residents to add the fireplace inscription.
Today the house is filled with family antiques, mostly from Danner’s paternal grandmother, Katharine, who died at age 96 in 2006. Though some younger folks feel bogged down by heirlooms, trapped by the weight of family history and expectations, Danner has created a house that feels like a celebration of the old — at this time of year, a holiday home that glows with the presence of family, through keepsakes and memories.
Since moving into the house in 2006, Danner has planted an organic vegetable garden, installed a greenhouse, inherited a pet rooster named George and tended to the fruit trees that a prior owner planted on the hillside leading down to the street. Her 10-yearold son, Danner Renfro, and 5-year-old daughter, Emma Renfro, have watched their urban orchard yield figs, plums, Satsumas, Meyer lemons, apples, almonds and peaches, plus Concord and Thompson grapes.
To keep up with the ripening fruit, Danner taught herself how to make jelly and jam, working at a Viking range in an otherwise vintage-flavored kitchen. Her first batches were adapted from instructions in the “Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.”
The former actress parlayed those experiments into Jenkins Jellies, a line of spreads made with business partner Maria Newman. Danner and Newman recently gathered their favorite hot-pepper jelly recipes into a cookbook, “Sweet Heat” ($15.95, St. Lynn’s Press). In the foreword to the book, Danner’s cousin Gwyneth Paltrow recalled the family gatherings of their childhood: “Hillary and I always had this in common, and do to this day ... cooking for people we love, eating, hanging out as a family. It’s how we were raised. It’s what we do.”