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(1908–1994)
Tashiro was born in Pawtucket RI to Aijiro and Nao Tashiro and spent most of his childhood in New Haven CT then Seattle WA. He attended Queen Anne High School and played on the basketball team, graduating in 1925. After a stint working for the Great Northern Railway in Tye WA on the Cascade Tunnel, he started at the University of Cincinnati. where he was on the basketball team. After being diagnosed with TB in one lung, doctors collapsed it and he spent a year recovering in a sanatorium, returning to school to graduate with a BS in Landscape Architecture in 1933. From 1934 to 1936 he was a landscape architect for the Ohio Historian and Archeological Society and the Cincinnati Parks and Recreation Commission. From 1936 to 1938 he was in private practice in Cincinnati working with another landscape architect named Parker. One of those projects was the Rauh House, designed by John Becker:
He also worked on projects for Joseph Freiberg, Harry Lowenstein, Harold Comey, Joseph Work, and others. In 1936 he married Isobel Hess. In 1938, Tashiro was recruited to Appalachian State University (ASU) in Boone NC as Landscape Architect and Associate Architect. He also taught Landscape Design, Creative Writing, and History of Western Civilizations. Among many buildings, Tashiro designed what is now the Psychology building at ASU plus a number of faculty houses. His brothers Kenji and Arthur and Saburo and sister Aiko, despite being born in America, were all imprisoned with most of the US Japanese citizens during the internments of WWII. Aiji escaped internment living in the small NC town, although he was publicly investigated. He was in the Army for a year but because of his lung was in the infirmary most of that time.
From 1943 to 1945 he was landscape architect for the Howard-Hickory Company. From 1945 to 1952 he was a partner with D. Carroll Abee at Abee and Tashiro in Hickory NC. He got his architectural license while working with Abee. In 1946, he married for the second time to Florence Ruby Boyd and they had four sons, Arthur, Stephen, Eugene and Richard. In 1956, he partnered with Allen J. Bolick as Tashiro and Bolick. By 1959 he went on his own as both architect and landscape architect. He moved to North Wilkesboro NC around 1961. Lowes was just taking off and used Tashiro for a variety of projects. Tashiro was also a registered surveyor. His son Eugene (Gener) Tashiro worked in his office from childhood, received an MA in Architecture, and eventually inherited the practice. The firm continued until 2008 when Gener moved to work in Facilities and Architectural Services at East Carolina University in Greenville NC. Tashiro resisted being labeled a specialist in any aspect of design work, preferring a wide variety of projects, clients, and challenges. He designed many types of buildings, retiring around 1985 but continuing part time until about 1993.
2017 Index of Tashiro Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina (Excel)
Sources include: Mary Margaret Stamy; son Eugene (Gener) Tashiro; Sheila Brady; Allene Stevens; architectural historian Beth Keane.
