A New Barn, an Old Legacy, and a Brighter Future for At Risk Youth
Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy’s permanent homecoming.
This October, the Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy (PURA) will open the doors of its permanent barn in the heart of Philadelphia. For an organization built on the legacy and idea that horses belong in the city — not despite the concrete, but because of it — the moment marks a new chapter in urban horsemanship, right in the heart of the city that inspired it.
PURA was founded in January 2019 to preserve and carry forward the life, legacy, and culture of Philadelphia’s urban Black cowboys and cowgirls. Its executive director, Erin S. Brown — known to many as “The Concrete Cowgirl” — has dedicated herself to giving Philadelphia’s urban horsemen and horsewomen a permanent home of their own. Ask Erin what PURA means to her, and the answer goes deeper than horses and titles: “This community raised me. So to have our elders and my peers look at PURA and recognize it as the next level for our culture, our horses, and our young people means everything… I have a heck of a team beside me, and we’re just getting started,”
Under Brown’s leadership, PURA has grown into an organization with its own identity and mission: proving that horses, horsemanship, and the community they build have a lasting place in Philadelphia.
More Than a Barn
The barn sits at the edge of the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia, backing into a wooded trail system while remaining directly across the street from a residential block — a location that encapsulates exactly what PURA is meant to be: rooted in the city, but connected to open land.
What makes the opening significant isn’t just the building — it’s what PURA plans to do inside it. The organization’s flagship youth initiative, the Junior Concrete Cowboys and Cowgirls program, pairs riding instruction with horsemanship fundamentals: horse education, equine first aid, and basic anatomy and physiology, alongside academic support. Riding lessons are offered in both Western and English discipline, reflecting the heritage of Philadelphia’s Black riding community, and the academy also runs horse clubs, lessons, and community events built around the animals.
PURA’s mission has always extended beyond the arena. The organization’s outreach aims to serve at-risk youth in the surrounding neighborhood — using the discipline and responsibility of horse care as a tool for mentorship in a part of the city that has often lacked consistent recreational resources. She has spoken openly about wanting to see Philadelphia’s Black riders compete at the same level as their better-resourced peers, arguing that talent has never been the barrier — access has. A permanent facility, with its own horses and its own space to train, is designed to start closing that gap.
What Comes Next
A permanent home in the heart of the city carries a weight beyond bricks and mortar. It is a statement that urban horsemanship in Philadelphia isn’t a relic to be remembered in a museum— it’s a living tradition, one that a new generation of city kids will get to ride into.
Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. More information on programs, volunteering, and donations is available at thepura.org.
