The success of the modern Olympic Games is reflected not only in the global interest but also in the number of athletes participating. In Athens in 1896, a total of 250 male athletes took part and no females. It was only at the 1900 Paris games that women competed for the first time. 22 of the 997 participating athletes were women.
In Paris for the 1924 Games, there was some accommodation for athletes for the first time. But the small wooden huts were not very spectacular. And in Amsterdam in 1928, most of the athletes stayed either in hotels or in country boats moored in the city.
Fittingly enough the first use of the Olympic Village goes back to the Olympic Games held in Los Angeles in 1932. In the run up to the Games Popular Science Monthly reported in 1931 about the plans of on Olympic Village with “a group of several hundred houses, a 1200-foot-long dining hall and a large administration building”. There was also a post office, a dental laboratory, a theatre, a figure station as well as a radio station. It should be noted that the village for men only, housing 1,836 male athletes while 126 female athletes were put up in a hotel.
What a far cry from the present. Since 1956 in Melbourne, the Olympic Village became part of the cityscape after the games.
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