Archaeological Findings

Nobody knows for sure how the Enchanted Broccoli Forest came into being, but early photographs suggest that the house was made from sand and wood by the able hands of an ancient architecture-loving tribe of beautiful women. (The blueprints Andy once saw were dated 1964, but that may have been a mistake.)

The AD Years

The house was first occupied by the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Back in those days, it is said, Deep Space was painted black with glowy stuff on the walls, and there were blacklights in the hallway. What is now the computer room used to be the frat's wet bar, and Happy Hour happened every Wednesday. ADP Stanford has since become a non-fraternal co-ed literary and recreational society, and still sometimes holds parties, society events and literary nights at EBF.

The Alpha Delts lost the house in 1991 due to insufficient membership and perhaps a tiny bit of friction with the Man. When Alpha Delt left, the house became a co-op: student-cooked, student-cleaned, and student-run, and a whole lot more....

How a House Became a Forest

There once was a co-op at Stanford called Phi Si. It was located in what is now the Synergy house. Synergy used to be in another place near George Schultz's house, but after the '87 earthquake it was condemned and razed, and the University gave the Phi Si house to the newly homeless Synners. The then-homeless Phi Si were offered our house in 1991 when the Alpha Delts got booted out. Thus, when members of the Phi Si house moved into 375 Campus, they were confronted with either renaming it Phi Si, or coming up with a new name.

The decision to call it EBF was partly based on the hope that the Phi Si house would be restored (it was initially slated to be razed) and keep the Phi Si name. The politics of why the Phi Si house became Synergy rather than be restored as Phi Si are a bit unclear, but popular belief at the time held that the university was a bit miffed at all the illicit substance use/dealing/etc. that were 'rumored' to be happening there.

Anyhow, Phi Si was a co-op, so EBF naturally became one as well since it was really just a relocation of people.

Our Name
The future managers of the co-op submitted to the University a long list of ridiculous possible names for the house, most involving drugs or other illegal activities. As a joke, the name "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" was included somewhere near the end (it's the name of a famous vegetarian cookbook by Mollie Katzen, one of the founders of the Moosewood Collective Kitchen in Ithaca, NY). This name was acceptable to the Man and has been our official name ever since. (The Man's laxity with nomenclature has since diminished. When our neighbors Delta Tau Delta lost their house in 1995, the new self-op that occupied their house requested the charming appellation "Beyond the Forest of Enchantment", or BFE. For unspecified reasons, this name did not go over well, and their house is now called Narnia.)