Snowden was graduated from the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1926 and studied at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York where he earned the Otis Elevator Prize. He then worked as an assistant to Alexander A. Weinman and, in 1927, won the Prix de Rome for his figural sculpture Flora. He was at the American Academy in Rome until 1930 and on his return taught at Yale.
He created memorials for the cities of Saratoga Springs and Armonk, New York, and designed the Yale Memorial Tablet at Pershing Hall in Paris. His works also adorn the Bronx County (New York) Courthouse, the State Capitol in Hartford, Connecticut, and a number of churches, notably several in California. His three monumental groups which collectively depict The Labors of Man were a feature of the 1939 New York World's Fair. For the north pediment of the Department of the Post Office Building in Washington, D.C., he modeled the pedimental group The Intercommunication Between the Continents of Europe and Africa based on designs by Weinman (1932-34). Two of his figures, both called Play, are in Brookgreen Gardens.
Snowden won the National Academy's Watrous Medal in 1941 for the colossal head entitled Phenomenon (cat. no. 291) and was a member of the National Sculpture Society and the Architectural League of New York.
