The Stevens brothers selected their family estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, as the construction site for the ship. They had to have a drydock dug out of solid rock there, and then install large pumps to keep the drydock from flooding, and delays occurred from the very beginning of the project. The budget for the ship was set at $600,000 (USD), based on vaguely similar earlier ships, but in fact the new ship was revolutionary in concept and design that no one really knew how to build her or how much she would cost.