[1][2] The design was built by Menger Boatworks in Babylon, New York, United States from 2003 until the company went out of business in 2004.
It is a gaff rigged catboat, with a plumb stem, an angled transom, a transom-hung rudder controlled by a wheel and a fixed stub keel with a retractable centerboard.
[1][2] The design has sleeping accommodation for three people, with a double "V"-berth in the bow and a straight settee on the port side of the main cabin.
"[4] In a 2010 review Steve Henkel wrote, "the Menger Cat 23 is a very close relative of a design by Francis Sweiguth (1882–1970) built on Long Island, NY, in fiberglass in the late 1960s and early 1970s and called the Americat 22.
But soon the father and son team had fudged a little here and there, raised the cockpit coaming, added an extra couple of portlights, and rewrote the brochure dimensions, and somehow the result became the Menger 23 (no longer the 22)—now with a whopping 1,000 lbs.