A century of Cowden Hall

Southwestern Seminary celebrates 100 years of musical excellence, training in the SCMW’s historic home

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the spring 2026 issue of Southwestern News.

Etched into the cornerstone of Cowden Hall on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is a verse from Colossians 3: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16, KJV).

“There could not be a better cornerstone than that,” says Joe Crider, dean of the School of Church Music and Worship since 2019, pointing out another cornerstone plaque that states the building was constructed to “Jehovah’s praise in Gospel song, 1926.”

Speaking of the historic home of the SCMW, Crider says, “The history of it, the beauty of it—it’s pretty amazing.”

The scriptural charge to teach and admonish one another through music and worship is the mission of the faculty who lead and teach in that building, just as it was for the early leaders who taught when Cowden Hall was first opened.

A need for space

The still young seminary, which moved from the Baylor University campus in Waco to Fort Worth in 1910, opened the Department of Gospel Music under the leadership of I. E. Reynolds in 1915, starting with just one other instructor and nine students. But the department grew and in 1921 it had 15 faculty members and more than 200 students. At that time, it was recognized as a school of the seminary, the first of its kind in theological education.

Because of its growth, the music school was no longer able to share spaces with the School of Theology in Fort Worth Hall.

Joshua Waggener, professor of church music and worship since 2022, describes what it must have been like for the music students to practice next door to School of Theology classes and how that might have been difficult.

“The music students were having to practice in Fort Worth Hall, and, of course, disturbing everybody,” Waggener says. “And they were wanting to have their own space for music, and others were glad to see them go have that space.”

In 1925, Mrs. George E. Cowden donated $150,000 toward the construction of a new building in honor of her late husband, who was a friend of Southwestern’s second president L. R. Scarborough and vice-president of the Board of Trustees at the time of his death. A plaque in the entrance to Cowden Hall describes Cowden as “a typical western ranchman” who “sought by life, influence, and by large gifts of money to promote a saving Gospel around the world.”

With Mrs. Cowden’s determination that a music building was the perfect way to honor her husband’s memory and help the seminary, the project moved forward quickly.

Waggener says the story goes that Scarborough approached Reynolds about designing a music building after receiving the donation.

“I. E. Reynolds just didn’t miss a beat,” Waggener says of that meeting. “And he just opened up his desk, like he had been thinking about it for years, and he had a sketch of what the building would look like.”

Crider shows copies of the original blueprints that architects created from Reynolds’s designs, which he says they still consult at times to see how spaces were originally used, impacting how the school could use them today.

“There’s a lot of very specific intentionality about the building,” Crider says, from thick wooden doors with features to make them nearly soundproof, to the high ceilings and spiraling staircases, to a balcony below a stained-glass skylight where Crider says groups often sing because of the acoustics. “He knew what he was doing. He had everything planned.”

A project completed

A groundbreaking was held in late summer of 1925, and on Jan. 10, 1926, more than 1,000 people were present as they placed the cornerstone with Reynolds’s pencil sketches inside. Later in the year, the construction of Cowden Hall was completed, only the third building on Seminary Hill after Fort Worth Hall and Barnard Hall. Students began using the building in December after a four-day celebration, and with its completion, the name of the school was changed to the School of Sacred Music, which is chiseled over the doorway of the main entrance.

Through the century since its completion, the building has received upgrades and renovations, including the addition of air conditioning throughout and cushioned seats in the Reynolds Auditorium.

In the 1990s, the building went through the extensive project of constructing a three-story addition that houses more practice areas and classrooms and the Kathryn Sullivan Bowld Music Library, which houses a large collection of resources and historical items such as a psalter from the 1500s. The project was part of the seminary’s campus-wide, five-year strategic plan called the Upward 90.

“Students are always in here,” Crider says while walking through the Bowld Library, pointing out collections, resources, and artifacts on display. “It’s one of the finest libraries like it anywhere.”

Kathryn Bowld provided the majority of the $3.5 million needed for the library project, called phase I of the three-phase construction project that included other renovations and the addition of a recital hall, practice rooms, a choral rehearsal room, and a piano lab. Bowld was a pianist herself and a two-time graduate of Southwestern Seminary who also provided funding for three endowed chairs in the music school.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Oct. 25, 1990, and a dedication service was held on Oct. 20, 1992, after its completion, with then-president Russell Dilday presiding over the event. One of the first collections housed in the new library was the George Stebbins Memorial Collection with 1,200 music items and books that came from the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.

The library is home to almost half a million items supporting the curriculum of the SCMW, including books, scores, and musical pieces, such as dissertation works. Collections from former faculty and alumni have been donated as well, such as from long-time professor Claude Bass and alumnus Nathan Corbitt, a retired International Mission Board missionary to Africa.

“I’m just so grateful,” says Fang Lan Hsieh, the Bowld music librarian who came to work at Southwestern in 1994 and continues to work there part-time, of the retired professors and alumni who contribute their works. “They treasure this place, and they know this place very well, and they are willing to give their collections to us. I’m very, very grateful for them, and I told everyone I will take care of their library.”

Chuck Lewis, associate dean of the SCMW and professor of music and worship, arrived at Southwestern as a student in 1991 when the addition was being constructed. He recalls the excitement of the dedication ceremonies held when the doors opened in 1992, creating what feels like a “time warp” between the old and new buildings.

“We were incredibly thankful to have a music library that was off the chart in terms of its breadth and depth of research materials,” Lewis says, saying it allowed greater space than the previous area downstairs used for the library.

Lewis says the additional practice spaces also served as a beneficial resource to students.

“That was a wonderful gift to the students, just to have new areas to be able to practice and prepare and fine tune and hone their skills,” Lewis says.

Meeting the needs of current students

Today, it is easy to spot the updates made to Cowden Hall to address current needs, as changes in technology and modern music led to the addition of an electric guitar lab, acoustic guitar lab, bass lab, and a drum lab. In the Bowld Library there is also a computer lab for students to gain experience with the newest versions of software notation.

Lewis says having those areas that provide the classical approach to worship leadership training in the upstairs choral rehearsal rooms and the more modern resources found downstairs in the guitar labs is crucial to training current worship leaders.

“We’re doing both, because probably you’re going to encounter both in the church over the next 30 or 40 years of serving the church,” Lewis says. “So, we want to pack their toolbox full of tools, so they can serve well in both styles, genres, or kinds of worship.”

The lower level of Cowden Hall also provides a place for music students to provide instrument and voice lessons to members of the community through the Southwestern Music Academy, which began in 2004. The SMA includes a children’s choir that practices in Cowden Hall and participates in performances throughout the year in Reynolds Auditorium.

Because of the residential nature of its students, the visiting SMA students, and the constant performances, practices, and lessons going on, Crider says he believes Cowden Hall is the most active building on the Southwestern campus and remains the favorite place on the Southwestern campus for the SCMW professors.

“All of us would say, ‘What’s your favorite building on campus?’ Oh, Cowden Hall. Not even a question,” Crider says.

Nelly Juarez arrived at Southwestern from Costa Rica in 2021, when she started her MDiv in worship leadership. She graduated in the fall of 2024 and is now pursuing a PhD in Church Music and Worship. She recalls her first time seeing Cowden Hall.

“I still remember coming for the first time during a Preview Day and being mesmerized by the history and the dignity this building inspires,” Juarez says. “… I feel I’m part of something bigger. Also, the building comes alive with the sounds of music everywhere. This is a place of learning, fellowship, artistry, and creativity. One of my favorite spots is Reynolds Auditorium, where you feel that time stands still during a performance or a worship recital. I believe Cowden Hall truly encapsulates God’s gift of beauty and artistry to be displayed for His glory!”

Lewis gives tours to visitors and prospective students and says he often tells them, “They just don’t make them like this anymore.” He says those visiting students usually do not just love the architecture but are amazed by the beauty found in both the original, traditional areas and the more modern areas. “They love the blend of the old and the new.”

But Crider and Lewis agree that the modern additions and the original features that remain a part of Cowden Hall’s identity—such as the busts displayed in Reynolds Auditorium and the place outside where a hitching post for horses once stood—are all a part of their commitment to the SCMW goals of being biblically faithful, musically excellent, and ministry focused.

A legacy continues

“Buildings do have a personality, and this one does of artistic beauty, of joy, of somewhat of a transcendent nature to it,” Crider says. “It’s not a house of worship, but that’s what students are training to do here. And do we worship here? Absolutely, in concerts and recitals and worship projects. But because it was so wonderfully dedicated with such intentionality, I think it has not just maintained it, the building serves to continue that ageless quality of what we do here and why we do it.”

Part of the personality and intentionality of Cowden Hall is the upper stonework of the exterior of the building that holds the carved names of individuals who have influenced church music since biblical times. Today, there are 32 names displayed, starting with Jubal, mentioned in Genesis 4:21 as “the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe,” and continuing all the way through Gospel singer and composer Ira Sankey. Others carved into the structure include both biblical individuals, such as David, Moses, and Miriam, and church fathers and composers including Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, Johann Sebastian Bach, and William Bradbury.

Waggener points out it was a systematic theology professor, Albert Venting, who helped Reynolds compile a list of the names of biblical and historical church musicians to be included on the building. In honor of 100 years of Cowden Hall, the most recent issues of the Artistic Theologian, SCMW’s academic journal edited by Waggener focused on worship and the church music culture, has included articles on the individuals whose names are memorialized around the crown of Cowden Hall.

Reynolds’s legacy is also memorialized not just in the Reynolds Auditorium, but throughout the building in the cross and the lyre logo that he designed for the then School of Sacred Music. The image can be found in prominent places such as over the building entrance, the entrance to the auditorium, and the stained-glass windows. It is also seen in more obscure places such as on some of the original brass doorknobs.

Lewis says he is pleased that he now has an office in the space that former faculty member Joe King used when Lewis was a student.

“I stand on the legacy of amazing faculty who come before me and this generation of faculty, including Dr. Joe King and Dr. Bruce Leafblad and David Keith, all those folks,” Lewis says.

Crider references a quote from Winston Churchill when considering the impact Cowden Hall has had on the music school and Southwestern Seminary as a whole: “We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.”

“This building, it’s not just served us well,” Crider says of the structure that he says is still “wonderfully serviceable.” “It has helped propel us, and I think it will into the next century.”

Thousands of music school students have gone through what started as the Department of Gospel Music and is today named the School of Church Music and Worship, with many going on to serve their churches in worship leadership and instrumental performances. Changes have come to the music school as technology and styles changed over the past 100 years, but the goal of the school remains unchanged.

“Different than what Dr. Reynolds probably envisioned back in 1926,” Crider says of some of the more modern ways Cowden Hall is used today. “But in light of the original goal of living out Col. 3:16, I think he would be thrilled.”