What was going on when I was born?

The chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers today predicted an annual growth rate for the national economy this winter that is considerably higher than what the Administration and most private economists were expecting just a month ago. The chairman, Martin S. Feldstein, told the National Association of Manufacturers that the rate for the first quarter would be 6 percent, up from 4 to 5 percent expected earlier. It is unusual for the Administration to predict a quarter's rate of economic growth so early. In two weeks the Commerce Department will make the first official estimate in its ''flash'' report. But 6 percent growth is consistent with what many forecasters have predicted recently in light of unexpectedly strong growth in housing starts, automobile sales and industrial production.

LOBBIES may be functional areas that collect and organize people for their ascent into a building, but in Manhattan they are also among the great artifacts of the city. Architects and builders, to create a good first impression, have often concentrated their attention and budgets on them: the well-conceived, well- executed lobby can be a synopsis of both a building and a period of architectural history. If New York is a living architectural museum, lobbies form a distinct type of exhibit within it. It is not necessary to be an intrepid urban explorer to discover the lobbies of public buildings - they are accessible even to the casual boulevardier. In midtown especially, they form an almost continuous street-level honeycomb; many have an entrance on one street and an exit on another, establishing a secondary, episodic pathway. New York's streets and avenues may seem strictly gridded and channeled, but the lobbies, in fact, make the city quite porous. There are many possible points of departure in midtown, and some lobbies fall into a sequence that makes a convenient weekend walk.

A key Senate committee today rejected a proposal by President Reagan that would have nearly doubled aid this year to the Nicaraguan insurgents. The Republican-controlled panel, the Senate Appropriations Committee, said it had been inadequately consulted about the increase. In what was viewed as a setback for the Administration, the committee voted 15 to 14 against providing $21 million in additional funds for the Nicaraguan rebel forces, which have been financed through the Central Intelligence Agency. Earlier this year Congress approved $24 million.

Lobbyists for expensive automobiles won a victory in the Senate Finance Committee today by turning around a 10- to-4 vote of last week that limited the depreciation deductions for cars used by businesses to $15,000. Their success almost went unnoticed, however, because there was no new roll-call vote. The only indication of a change - until Senator Bob Dole, the committee chairman, mentioned it in passing - was the blank space on the committee's blackboard where the luxury auto restriction had been listed. ''The lobby for the rich overwhelmed the committee,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, who sponsored the ceiling. Senator Bill Bradley, Democrat of New Jersey, where the Mercedes-Benz American headquarters is based, opposed the luxury car cap. He argued that it was bad tax policy to single out cars while not covering other such items, such as jets or yachts.

''They were not Poles who came at us innocents with riot sticks, shields, helmets, guns and gas.

Interest rates rose yesterday, with most of the increases coming late in the day after the Federal Reserve announced that the nation's basic money supply fell by $1.5 billion in the week ended Feb. 27. Government securities dealers and economists said the drop in prices and increase in rates reflected disappointment among traders that the money supply drop was not greater. Economists, however, said the figure was not significant enough to cause any change in Fed policy. The decline in the M-1 money supply measure, which consists of currency plus all kinds of checking accounts, was less than the $2 billion estimate that many analysts had made.

Because of an editing error, an article in some copies of Business Day yesterday quoted President Reagan incorrectly on his view of the proposed merger of the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation. According to a White House transcript, the President said, ''Since I know that this is a legal matter that's being decided I have tried to keep quiet on it, but I don't mind telling you that I do not believe that such a merger would reduce competition to the point that it would constitute monopoly at all.''

Because of a mechanical error, some copies of the Late Edition yesterday omitted page D2 and carried page D27 twice. Readers wishing copies of the missing page may write to Production Quality Control, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.

In 1948, a former bank teller named Trammell Crow made his first investment in real estate by building a modest-sized warehouse in Dallas. Today, at 69, he is believed to be the nation's largest owner of commercial property, with his affiliated companies valued at $7 billion. In 1964, Paul Milstein, the son of a Bronx flooring-company owner, completed his first project as a builder - the 35-story Dorchester Towers apartments on the Upper West Side. Since then, with his older brother Seymour, he has gained a controlling interest in the United Brands Company and has extended his real-estate holdings all over New York City, from the Bank of America Building on the East Side to the Milford Plaza Hotel on the West Side. Mr. Crow and Mr. Milstein, who are both listed by Forbes Magazine as among the 400 wealthiest men in the nation, have vastly different styles, and they have never met. But they became the key figures in an extraordinary 10-month wrangle last year over who would be allowed to develop a $400 million merchandise mart as part of a $1.6- billion plan to rebuild Times Square.

An old debate over whether to abolish the tolls on the Connecticut Turnpike flared anew today with arguments that pointed up the state's regional differences. Legislators and residents from Fairfield County and other communities along the turnpike argued that retaining the tolls would be unfair to their part of the state. Those from other areas that do not have toll roads countered that they were already subsidizing Fairfield County with tax money to run the New Haven commuter rail line.

A landmark Supreme Court decision that strengthened press protections in libel cases is being eroded by new court decisions and growing public antagonism toward news organizations, press lawyers said yesterday at a conference marking the 20th anniversary of the ruling. Lawyers for libel plaintiffs, however, said the Court's decision in the case - The New York Times v. Sullivan - continued to give the press an unfair advantage in attacking the reputations of public figures, as well as those of private citizens. More than 250 lawyers from around the country went to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for the conference, which brought together the three lawyers who argued the Sullivan decision before the Supreme Court. On March 9, 1964, in its most famous and hotly debated finding in defamation law, the Court threw out a $500,000 judgment in favor of L. B. Sullivan, the Police Commissioner of Montgomery, Ala.

Reagan Administration officials said today that Iran appeared to be trying to wear down Iraq with costly attacks by untrained units to set the stage for a possibly decisive thrust by regular forces. In support of this view, the officials pointed out that few regular Iranian Army units appeared to have been engaged in the most recent offensive led by untrained Revolutionary Guards and carried out mostly by teen-agers and older men. These officials were reluctant to try to predict the outcome of the war, which began in September 1980, or to say which side they thought was winning. But they made it clear they felt that Washington, rather than maintaining the more neutral stance that prevailed until about a year ago, was now interested in preventing a victory by Iran.