Vintage photos show what it was like to stay at the first Olympic Village 100 years ago

When Paris hosted the Olympics in 1924, it was the first time athletes stayed together in a village.

Before 1924, delegations stayed in hotels, military buildings, or with local families in host cities, according to the Olympics Studies Centre.

But in 1923, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruled that a Games' organizing committee was required "to furnish housing and all necessary services for athletes," per a 2011 paper published in the Asian Social Science journal by the Canadian Center of Science and Education.

"A contract has to be formed and charges have to be fixed each time," the IOC said. "Expenses required have to be assumed by the participating nations themselves."

The organizers of the 1924 Paris Olympics also believed housing athletes together had benefits beyond logistics and cost.

"In bringing young people from every nation together, [the Olympic Games] help foster this sense of cordiality that teaches men to become acquainted with each other better first and then to hold each other in higher esteem, a process that the Paris Games will have greatly aided," said Frantz Reichel, the secretary-general of the organizing committee of the 1924 Paris Olympics, according to The Olympics.

The village was primitive by today's standards. The fenced-in area contained wooden huts separated by dirt paths.

The village was built close to the Stade Olympique de Colombes, where many sporting events were held northwest of Paris.

According to the Olympics Studies Centre, its basic wooden huts were designed for three occupants each, with three beds, two basins for washing, and a shower.

The structures were separated by dirt paths that could be accessed by car.

Guinness World Records, which recognizes Paris as the home of the first Olympic Village, noted that it wasn't until the Los Angeles Games in 1932 that the Olympic Village featured "kitchens and other modern amenities."

Delegations paid for bed and board, which included food, laundry, and showers.

Teams reserved beds by paying a deposit, and then they were charged daily rates for bed and board, according to the Olympic Studies Centre.

Athletes were provided three meals a day — lunch and dinner included half a bottle of wine.

Dinner was three courses — soup, a course that included a type of meat, and dessert — and athletes were offered "half a bottle of wine with both lunch and dinner every day," The Times of London reported.

At this year's Olympics, no wine or alcohol is offered in the village.

The village was also home to a post office, a bureau de change, a salon, and other services.

Other services included laundry and telegraph and telephone access, per the Olympics Studies Centre.

The accommodation was within walking distance of the Stade de Colombes, the main stadium for the 1924 Olympics.

Previously a horse-racing track that opened in 1883, it became a stadium in 1907, according to the Paris' tourism website. It was fully renovated to hold 45,000 spectators for the Olympics.

The stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as sporting events such as equestrian events, football, rugby, track and field, and some pentathlons.

The Stade de Colombes was later renamed the Stade Yves-du-Manoir. It is hosting field hockey events at the 2024 Olympics.

Not every athlete competing in Paris stayed at the village.

Not all sports held their events at the Stade de Colombes, so it made sense for athletes competing in events held outside Paris to stay near their respective venues rather than at the Olympic Village.

For example, according to the Olympics Studies Centre, athletes participating in shooting events stayed close to the venues in Reims and Châlons-sur-Marne (now called Châlons-en-Champagne), which are around 100 miles northeast of Paris.

Members of the US team stayed at Chateau Rocquencourt, a sprawling estate west of Paris.

The New York Times reported in 1924 that the property had been built for Olympians and had living quarters, a dining hall, and a recreation center. The estate also had stables for the team's polo horses.

While officials slept comfortably inside the estate's mansion and female athletes occupied gatehouses on the property, the male athletes slept in modest barracks outside.

"We found when we arrived that they had built some prefab houses made of pressed board, and they were pretty austere," William Neufeld, a US javelin thrower, recalled for The LA84 Foundation's oral history series published in 1987.

"We had army cots with thin mattresses, and they had canvas sheets for us, which were pretty rough," he said, adding, "We had a chair or two, and that was our furniture."

Neufeld said that because the field at the estate was "pretty rough," athletes had to travel by "lumbering buses" to train at Colombes Stadium.

Recollections suggest that the female athletes' accommodations at the gatehouses were better. Aileen Riggin, a medal-winning diver and swimmer, remembered "winding paths and rose gardens" on the property.

"It was a heavenly place," she told the foundation in 1994.

Ultimately, Neufeld felt the team would have benefited from living alongside competitors from other countries in the Olympic Village.

"I think the Olympic Village is one important factor in making the Olympics a success," he said in 1987. "This is just one of the improvements, I think, that developed over the years."

The Olympic Village was only temporary and was pulled down after the last medals were awarded.

According to the BBC, the Olympic Village was only intended to be temporary, so it was knocked down after the athletes moved out.

The Olympics Studies Centre said it wasn't until the 1936 Berlin Olympics that buildings constructed for Olympic Villages were reused for other purposes, such as residences or museums.

After the 2024 Olympics, the newly constructed Olympic Village in the Paris suburbs will be converted into 2,500 homes, a hotel, offices, shops, and parks, among other amenities, the Olympics said.

The village in Seine-Saint-Denis is the size of 70 soccer fields and reportedly cost $1.85 billion to build. French officials hope the village will revitalize an area long associated with poverty and crime, The New York Times reported.

Its sheer size and price tag indicate just how far the Olympic Village has come since its first modest iteration in the city 100 years ago.