Pioneer Information
Born and raised in the town of Windsor in Bertie County, North Carolina, Grandy was one of seventeen children. Raised on a working farm, he sought out a career absent of demanding, physical labor. Grandy attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, now North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), where he earned a B.S. in horticulture in 1940. Around 1939 he and several classmates opened the first African American-owned floral shop in Greensboro, North Carolina. Between 1940 and 1942, Grandy worked towards a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Cornell University. Before earning the degree, he returned to his family’s farm to help save the property from foreclosure.
Grandy was hired as a faculty member at Southern University School of Architecture in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, teaching there for a year before taking a position in the Department of Plant Science and Technology at his alma mater, NC A&T. There, he taught horticulture and landscape architecture there, alongside Dr. Charles Fountain and, in 1975, became superintendent of grounds. He remained at the university until his retirement 42 years later. In 1992 NC A&T became the first Historically Black College and University (HBCU) with an accredited undergraduate program in landscape architecture.
In private practice, Grandy specialized in residential and commercial design, including a residence for famed civil rights attorney S. Kenneth Lee, (1960) and an industrial campus for Burlington Industries with architect Arthur G. Odell in Greensboro (1970, demolished in 2005) Throughout his career Grandy served as an advisor to the New Farmers of America, a national organization of African Americans who studied vocational agriculture in public schools across eighteen states in the eastern and southern United States. Grandy passed away at the age of 82. He is buried in in Greensboro, North Carolina.
