Soho Penthouse Roof Deck

This rooftop garden creates a lush and private setting on a once open tar roof. Bringing plants, flowers and song birds to the urban environment fulfills our mission of

"Creating the Green in between".

The designs of this garden highlight City Beautiful Carpentry's skill at creating beautiful custom decks, planter boxes, benches, arbors and cabinetry.

The overall accomplishment of this project adds an increased amount of usable space and an improvement in the quality of life for our clients.

Includes planter box/bench units, and a forest-full of bamboo for privacy and meditation.
This is an outdoor jacuzzi, completely encased in ipe.

A close-up of the copper nosing.

Thanks to everyone who came to see us...

At the 2010

We were very pleased to partner with Mingo Design, Plant Connection Inc., and Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet to create a 400 square foot booth about high end sustainable garden structures and environments, focusing on FSC and other green building materials.


The booth was a huge success, drawing many compliments and enabling us to meet a whole host of people from various parts of the industry, and home owners from all over the area.

We were delighted to meet you all and look forward to creating beautiful custom carpentry and garden structures with you soon.

And again, a special thank you to General Woodcraft for helping us to make this booth happen.

Ipe Deck with Outdoor Shower and Inset Stone

This deck makes a perfect outdoor grilling and lounging area. Equipped with a luxurious outdoor shower, it makes it easy to cool off in the summertime.

The rooftop garden features a series of low-voltage LED lights that run along the edge of the upper and lower decks creating a dramatic effect at night. The lights are inset into the ipe boards so that the surface is completely smooth.

All of the ipe was milled to precise widths to ensure that the removable decking sections would line up perfectly. Below is a view of the elevated train through beach grass. The custom planter boxes are painted to compliment the steel railing behind and are created at various heights to mirror the surrounding cityscape.

Rooftop Terrace Overlooking the East River

This penthouse terrace is wrapped in custom ipe planter boxes to create an idyllic environment overlooking the East River.

Every corner on this project features 45 degree miters with hidden splines glued into the seam. This creates the cleanest attainable look with the strongest possible joint.

Below is an example of a "butt-joint", which still looks very handsome, but the seams are visible.

The boxes include an ipe base that has been contoured to follow the sloping angle of the tile deck.

The whole project compliments the stunning view of the East River.

Furniture: Outdoor and Indoor

City Beautiful creates all kinds of custom furniture for the finest interiors and the lushest gardens. We can also fix and refinish antique pieces that have fallen into disrepair.

Below is a walnut dining room table that also transforms into a guest bed. You'll have to call us for a description of how that happens, but trust us, it's a transformer.


The wrought iron on this bench is nearly 200 years old, and the original teak was ravaged by weather and time. We made an exact copy of the original wooden slats and gave this amazing antique (and it's identical partner) a new lease on life.The coffee table below is an example of a more modern design. We can work with your designer, or we can help you design a custom piece yourself.


We can make any kind of furniture for outdoor settings, but the 2 images below are examples of furniture that has been integrated into a larger fence and garden design. This ipe set turned the extensive brickwork into a lounge area.And the BBQ table and bench (below) is also a storage cabinet. By lifting the bench seat, the client can access all of their gardening tools and BBQ equipment.

Below is an ipe slatted bench and fence project.

Planter Boxes and Storage Cabinets

We offer a complete selection of planter boxes and custom storage cabinets. We build using all types of wood including ipe and cedar. All of our planter boxes are made with marine-grade plywood and are lined with roof-grade rubber. All exposed edges are treated and painted, which insures they will last longer than any other wooden boxes that you can find.

This is a selection of trash cabinets from various parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The one below is made from ipe, which we showcase the different shades of the wood in the continuous stripe pattern of the doors.
Ipe is strong and resilient to the weather, and if treated properly can last more than 15 years.

All of our planter boxes are built with adequate drainage, so that the plants will thrive, and water will move easily out of the box, preventing rot.

Backyard Meditation Garden: Bamboo and Brazilian Walnut

This backyard garden fence was made using black bamboo and ipe. It is a rather complicated fabrication process to combine the bamboo poles with the flat ipe boards, but when completed it created one of our most unique environments.

Park Slope Garden and Planters: Ipe and Brick

This backyard garden in Park Slope consists of a a handsome ipe fence with cap, in front of a brick and stone planter system. The garden was designed by Timothy Osborne of The Organic Gardener NYC.

This aerial shot also shows off the opposing wall and the set of ipe furniture that we fabricated for the garden, including a curved ipe bench.

Herringbone Roof Deck- West Village

Herringbone describes a distinctive V-shaped weaving pattern usually found in twill fabric. The pattern is called herringbone because it looks like the skeleton of a herring fish. The picture below shows the final deck for a rooftop deck in the West Village of Manhattan.

Here is an example of Herringbone fabric, the inspiration for this design.
We also built this air-conditioner cover (left below) and the wide staircase leading to a lower , smaller deck. The detail at the corners of the trim on the deck follow their own herringbone pattern. The deck was also created using a minimum of visible screws, so City Beautiful engineered a decking system that fit together with hidden catches and tabs.

As you can see below, we created sample pieces out of plywood to test our system before fabricating the final deck out of ipe. We also assembled the entire deck in our Red Hook shop to be sure that the system worked before we transported them to the client's home.