Early in the morning, when the city still hums more than it roars, you can smell the hay. You can hear the hooves against the concrete. For Erin Brown, known across Philadelphia as The Concrete Cowgirl, one memory from 1990 at the Fletcher Street Stables still anchors her. “It smelled like a farm, but in a residential neighborhood,” she said. Hay and horses. Is the air thick? With something wild and familiar. She would ride. She would care. She would learn.
Brown started riding at Fletcher Street as a teenager and later managed the stables for twelve years after graduating high school. Nearly three decades into competing in both hunt seat and stock seat disciplines, two distinct riding styles that divide the English and Western traditions of the sport, she has transformed that early memory into something larger: the Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy (PURA), a nonprofit founded in 2019 to preserve the city’s Black equestrian tradition, where she now serves as Executive Director.
PURA was created in collaboration with the late Eric Miller, a lifelong Fletcher Street rider and mentor who championed the preservation of Philadelphia’s urban horsemanship until his passing in 2019, along with the neighborhood equestrians and the filmmakers Ricky Staub and Dan Walser, whose 2020 Netflix film Concrete Cowboy brought the story of Fletcher Street to a global audience. The Western drama film, starring Idris Elba and Caleb McLaughlin, drew directly from the riders’ lived experiences, introducing viewers to a community that had long existed in the shadows of redevelopment. PURA carries that work forward, offering structured youth programs, mentorship, and a permanent home for the city’s Black cowboy legacy in a landscape where gentrification continues to threaten its roots.
Brown remembers the chill of those mornings, the echo of hoofbeats off row houses, the smell of the air when the horses exhaled. “The air, the hay. The horses,” she said. That smell became home, home in a city where few expected “cowboys” to exist, much less Black ones. Her memories are not sentimental alone; they’re gritty, grounded in sweat, wood, and city blocks. When you stand near the paddock at PURA, you feel that collision. Brown does.
As she leads lessons for a new generation, Brown sees not just children on horseback but a legacy. She cites the fact that up to 20–25% of cowboys in the 19th-century American West were Black. In Philadelphia, that legacy evolved. The city’s own horse culture traces back to the Fletcher family, whose stables operated on West Fletcher Street from the mid-19th century until 1901, followed by the Lederman family, who maintained the property for nearly sixty years.
That legacy has drawn attention from beyond Philadelphia, sometimes in ways that capture its spirit and other times that miss its texture. Concrete Cowboy turned local riders into symbols of a broader story, one that Brown both appreciates and complicates.
“It doesn’t represent what Fletcher Street is today,” Brown said of Concrete Cowboy. “It’s more the early 2000s version, and it’s not about one person like people think—it resonates with so many different riders. The story wasn’t built around a single face; it was about a whole community.”
That distinction matters to her. Once the film hit the media cycle, she explained, “every outlet just filed the same story, like it was about one club or one man. But it was really about all of us, the Riders of Fletcher Street, the families, the kids. That’s who it’s always been.”
What covenant has the city made with PURA to ensure its “forever home”? Brown speaks plainly: “What retains it is that it’s being built on recreation… we also have a long-term lease… the average generation can keep it.” The fight is not only to ride, but to remain. Land trusts, deed restrictions, and long leases matter. In a city where West Philly, Strawberry Mansion, and Fairmount Park land have become hot property, urban stables are a rarity.
The riders she trains, youth navigating public schools, facing economic hardship, and the daily risks of violence, are given more than just a saddle. They’re given responsibility. “You have a 1,200-pound animal that you’re now responsible for,” Brown said. “Your life is in their hands if you don’t take care of them.”
That responsibility changes them. Many arrive timid, distracted, unsure; over time, they grow more patient, more aware. Brown sees it happen every week. She resists turning that transformation into a tidy story about legacy or redemption; it’s simpler than that, and harder. What happens in the barn, she states, is “just growth. You see it. You feel it.” The work is quiet, repetitive, and sometimes exhausting. But to her, it’s the most meaningful kind of change there is.
In 10 years, Erin wants the public perception of urban Black cowboy culture in Philly to change. “I just want it to be seen in the best light… we really do this, and we can do it as professionals,” she says. While the racial barriers matter, “it’s not really the color of the skin that keeps you…?,” she adds, “it’s the financial side.” Talent is everywhere. Access is scarce. Brown has seen too many talented riders stopped by cost, entry fees, travel, and the price of a single horse. Still, she imagines what could happen if that barrier fell: world-class Black horse breeders raised in Philly, competing on the same stages as those who’ve had generational wealth behind them.
PURA’s planned new facility on 33rd Street, set for a spring grand opening, will give the organization a permanent home in Philadelphia. The project reflects years of work to secure a stable ground for a culture that has survived without it.
“I just want it to be seen in the best light,” Brown concluded. “We really do this, and we can do it as professionals.” She expresses how racial barriers still exist in the horse world, but the more brutal fight is financial. “You can have all the talent in the world, and unless you have an amazing sponsor that sees everything in you, it’s hard to get where you need to be.”
She hopes PURA makes that path easier for whoever comes next. A place to train, to compete, to stay visible in a city that keeps changing. “If every generation can keep it,” she said, “then we’ve done what we came to do.”
Discover more from The Clerk
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Be First to Comment