The creation of miles of parkland along the west side of Manhattan hasn’t come cheap; to make way for benches and bike lanes, the city has had to relocate Sanitation Department facilities that had faced the Hudson River. That decades-long task has now resulted in an architectural gem: a municipal salt shed in the form of a shapely concrete container that is winning rave reviews — even from people who have no idea what it’s for. (Honestly, a visitor to New York could be forgiven for thinking the salt shed, with a sculptural exterior that rewards repeated examination, was the new Whitney Museum, and the Whitney Museum, with its utilitarian skin, was the new salt shed.)

The so-called shed — really a seven-story enclosure designed to hold 5,000 tons of salt — is an adjunct to a massive sanitation department garage designed by Dattner Architects and WXY Architecture & Urban Planning.