Every hotel room in citizenM Bowery existed in Poland before it existed in Manhattan. The 210 steel-framed modules that make up the tower were manufactured by Polcom Modular at a factory north of Gdańsk, fully fitted with plumbing, lighting, furniture, and finishes — then shipped across the Atlantic to be stacked onto a New York site roughly 4,000 miles away.

Only the mattresses and televisions were left to install once the modules arrived. The engineering challenge wasn't building the rooms — it was coordinating a supply chain that crossed an ocean with a stacking sequence measured in weeks, not months.

210
Prefabricated modules
~24 wks
Full stacking process
~5 mo
Crane time on site
−1,200
Fewer truck deliveries
Phase 1 — Manufacturing in Poland
A hotel room, complete, before it ever leaves the factory
Polcom Modular built the 210 steel-framed units at a factory north of Gdańsk, each fully fitted with plumbing fixtures, lighting, furniture, and finishes — factory-controlled quality that on-site construction can't easily replicate at the same pace.
Phase 2 — Transatlantic transport
Crossing an ocean before crossing a street
The modules were shipped across the Atlantic and cleared customs in Brooklyn before being trucked to the Bowery site — a logistics chain built into the construction schedule as deliberately as any structural sequence on site.
Phase 3 — Podium and core first
Conventional construction sets the foundation
Before any module arrived, typical on-site construction methods built a multi-storey concrete podium and a concrete core housing the elevator shafts — the fixed structure the prefabricated floors above would later stack onto.
Phase 4 — Stacking to schedule
Roughly one floor of modules per week
Once installation began, modules were hoisted into place at a pace of roughly one floor per week, with the full stacking process taking approximately 24 weeks — compared with a year or longer for equivalent conventional construction of the same portion of the building.

A hotel room built 4,000 miles away, shipped across an ocean, and stacked into place on a Manhattan site in under six months.

citizenM Bowery became the largest permanent modular hotel project built in New York City at the time, and one project partner reported the modular approach came in roughly 15% cheaper than typical on-site construction for the project. As a reference case, it demonstrates that the real engineering challenge in cross-border modular construction isn't the building itself — it's coordinating manufacturing, shipping, customs, and a fast-track stacking sequence into a single, reliable schedule.

For further reading on modular installation methods, see Erection Engineering in Industrial Construction

Related case studies: AC Hotel NoMad · The Clement Canopy · Ichthys LNG Modules

Sources: The Architect's Newspaper — module transport from southern Poland via Gdańsk to Brooklyn's Red Hook Terminal, and the sunken-bolt connection system; Construction Dive — DeSimone Consulting Engineers' account of the cast-in-place-to-modular conversion. The building is described as 19 storeys in some sources and 21 in others; DeSimone characterises it as the tallest modular hotel in the United States rather than the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

The modules were manufactured by Polcom Modular at a factory north of Gdańsk, Poland, then shipped across the Atlantic and cleared customs in Brooklyn before being trucked to the Bowery site in Manhattan.

The hotel was built from 210 steel-framed modules, each fully fitted in the factory with plumbing, lighting, furniture, and finishes — leaving only mattresses and televisions to be installed on site.

Typical on-site construction methods were used first to build a multi-storey concrete podium and a concrete core housing the elevator shafts, establishing the fixed structure the modules would later stack onto.

The full stacking process took approximately 24 weeks, with the crane on site for roughly five months compared with a year or longer for equivalent conventional construction, and reduced truck deliveries to the site by about 1,200. One project partner reported the modular approach was roughly 15% cheaper than typical on-site construction for this project.