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.”
