Recoleta is a Spanish Colonial Revival house built in 1940 in the city of Charlottesville for University of Virginia music professor Harry Rogers Pratt and his wife, Agnes Edwards Rothery Pratt, a prolific writer of travel books. She also wrote three books on her adopted home of Virginia: Houses Virginians Have Loved, New Roads in Old Virginia, and A Fitting Habitation. The last book reveals the sophisticated design process behind Recoleta’s creation. The house was modeled on South American courtyard houses the Pratts had admired on their travels, but it also incorporated such influences as California Mission-style designs and Scandinavian folk architecture. The Pratts retained Charlottesville architect Charles Benjamin Baker, who designed for them a two-story house of cinder-block construction painted to simulate aged stucco. A red tile roof, a garden front with patio and loggias, rounded corner fireplaces, and wooden, stone, and wrought-iron architectural ornaments collected abroad add to Recoleta’s charm.