For the first time since reconstruction of the trade center began, a New York City streetscape is taking form. There are sidewalks and curbs, oak trees and honey locusts, street lamps and pigeons. And, as on any street near high-risk targets, there are also ranks of heavily reinforced posts, or bollards. 

But even with the bollards, the scene is appealingly open. Only security guards prevent visitors to the National September 11 Memorial from simply walking across Greenwich Street and up to the lobby of 4 World Trade Center, now under construction. 

The intersection offers palpable evidence that the monolithic 16-acre superblock that existed before Sept. 11, 2001, has truly been pared down.Amanda M. Burden, the director of the City Planning Department, said the agency had pushed to re-establish Greenwich and Fulton Streets running through the trade center site as a way of integrating the complex with Lower Manhattan. 

The use of sidewalk materials and their layout complement the memorial in a sophisticated and subtle manner, she wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday. There were countless mock-ups and sample reviews to make sure that we got the selection of granite, finishes, proportions and layout just right, including full-scale mock-ups.Browse our Granite slabs collection from the granitetrade.net! 

We were also intensively engaged in the bollard design, helping to facilitate an elliptical and tapered form that is effective from a security standpoint but not intrusive in size, Ms. Burden added.The portion of Greenwich Street between Vesey and Liberty Streets has existed in recent years, but only as a construction haul road. Seeing the partly finished landscaping brings home the fact that one day it will be restored to traffic, though on a highly restricted basis. 

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is constructing the new section of Greenwich Street,Shop for wholesale Granite countertops from China! which it expects to complete by the end of 2014. Some time around then, or early in 2015, the authority will move its headquarters into 4 World Trade Center. 

Unlike the rest of the tower, which is skinned in reflective glass, the buildings 47-foot-high lobby is clad in clear glass. It almost seems to embrace the street, a gesture made even stronger by an 80-foot-wide space between columns.The closeness of the lobby to the memorial imposed a special obligation on Mr. Maki and his client, Silverstein Properties, to create a space that was respectful without being sepulchral. 

Last week, their intentions for the lobby became clear with the installation of Sky Memory, a delicate, 98-foot-diameter titanium arc by the sculptor Kozo Nishino, of Kyoto, Japan. This is his first commission in the United States. 

Mr. Nishino has collaborated with Mr. Maki before. But his trade center commission owes itself to a visit by the developer, Larry A. Silverstein, and his wife, Klara, to the ArtCourt Gallery booth at a 2007 art fair in New York City. The gallery represents Mr. Nishino and was showing a model of his work. 

I had no idea about Larry, recalled Mitsue Yagi, the gallery director. I said, This artist makes huge-scale artwork. Larry said, Im making a very big building. 

Despite its great size, the Sky Memory sculpture weighs only 474 pounds. It is composed of seven sections of welded, exposed trusswork that are cantilevered and balanced 22 feet above the lobby floor, as if they were floating. The metal shifts in color from deep sapphire blue to pale jade green. 

This month, more than two dozen national headquarters staff, joined by family members and AFTers from nearby locals, volunteered for a cleanup of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Among them was Steven Greenburg, president of the Fairfax County (Va.) Federation of Teachers, who set his alarm for 4 a.m. on Saturday morning to help scrub the paths and black granite walls of the iconic monument and to participate in an observance honoring the men and women with names inscribed on it. 

"It was a privilege to be there," says Greenburg, "and really great to see so many unions working with our community to honor some of those who sacrificed the most for the country.A China Stone Carving concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets." The local president says there is no doubt this is "union work" at its best. "Any time that we are working to solve problems to better the lives of our communities, we are advancing the idea of solution-driven unionism," the elementary teacher explains. 

The AFT is working to build membership in the UVC by identifying union members who are veterans and inviting them to join. This outreach was on display at the 2013 TEACH conference, where the exhibit hall featured a UVC sign-up table, and it will continue through next year's national AFT convention. 

"Proud service in our nation's armed forces is one of the ties that bind thousands of AFT members and their families to the community," says AFT secretary-treasurer Lorretta Johnson, a member of the governing board of the Union Veterans Council. Honoring and strengthening those relationships in our members' lives, she says, is a reflection of the Framework for Community Engagement that the AFT adopted as national policy in 2010. "Participation in the Union Veterans Council is a great way to showcase both the spirit and substance of our Framework for Community Engagement." 

Also involved in the work of the UVC are AFT vice presidents Eric Feaver, David Gray and Tim Stoelball AFT vice presidents who are military veterans and who see how the effort to better the quality of life for veterans fits into thousands of members' personal and public lives. 

"There is a pretty massive transition from military to civilian life," notes Stoelb, president of the Oregon School Employees Association, who left the U.S. Navy as a Chief Petty Officer after more than two decades of service. He notes the transition "can be a rather drastic change, and we can relate and speak to it" as trade unionists with military backgrounds.