What was going on when I was born?

For decades, the American Hotel in Hoboken, N.J., was a cornerstone of the port city's commercial district. The hotel closed in 1982, but now the ornate, turn-of-the-century building that housed it is being converted into a commercial building with 50,000 square feet of office and retail space.

IT is one of the tenets of Ronald Reagan's Presidency that the path to success often leads through compromise. His change of mind last week on South Africa was a case in point. Less than three weeks after Mr. Reagan said he ''basically opposed the idea of punitive sanctions'' against the racially-divided nation, the President offered a series of executive actions against Pretoria. They included restrictions on the export of most nuclear technology and a ban on the sale of computers to security agencies and on most loans from United States banks to the Pretoria Government. He also proposed to bar the import of the Krugerrand, the gold coin, subject to consultations with trading partners.

Tonight, television gets a rare opportunity to play matchmaker between film and theater. The production of Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman'' that CBS will broadcast this evening at 8 features the performances that graced last year's Broadway revival starring Dustin Hoffman as that quintessential American dreamer, Willy Loman. Usually, when plays are presented on television, they are videotaped before a live audience - as was the case with recent cable TV productions of ''Sweeney Todd'' and ''You Can't Take It With You'' - with only perfunctory gestures toward adapting the work for another medium. But this version of ''Salesman'' was conceived from the beginning not as a made-for-TV film but as a theatrical feature, which means that from the very first frame - a stylized shot of the headlights of Willy Loman's vintage Chevrolet - the play has been completely redesigned, restaged, even reinterpreted for the screen.

TOWARD the end of a two-day retreat in the Virginia countryside to discuss tax legislation last weekend, Representative Dan Rostenkowski asked Treasury Department officials, Congressional staff members and tax experts from academia to leave the room so he could address the members of his Ways and Means Committee in private. ''Look, I don't want you to pass a bill because of your personal feelings for me,'' he said. ''I want you to do it because it's the right thing to do.'' It was, said the Congressman who related the incident, almost as if the committee chairman were talking in code. Mr. Rostenkowski, for reasons of his own, is determined that his tax-writing committee produce legislation that follows the broad outline of the ambitious tax plan that President Reagan proposed last May - a proposal that would reduce tax rates for individuals and corporations and abolish many deductions and credits. Few committee members share the chairman's commitment. But they are still likely to produce a bill to overhaul the tax system - mainly out of loyalty to Mr. Rostenkowski.

''LAST year, I was a wreck at the end of the season,'' Dave Johnson remembers. ''I used to suck down about 10 antacid pills every game. This year, I'm doing fine.'' He laughs, and says: ''Now I'm down to maybe six a game.'' ''Why am I doing better this year?'' he asks. And he laughs again, skips the deep reasoning and says: ''We're in first place.''

A PANEL of doctors, lawyers and insurance executives has recommended 14 wide-ranging changes that it says will cut the number of malpractice suits in New Jersey, lead to ''dramatic reductions'' in the rising cost of malpractice premiums and guarantee the continued availability of malpractice insurance. Panel members stressed that the proposals would preserve the rights of injured patients to collect damages and would upgrade the skills of doctors, as well as lawyers who handle malpractice cases. One recommendation would strengthen the state's Board of Medical Examiners, the agency that polices doctors and other health professionals; another would require doctors to complete 150 hours of continuing education every three years to renew their licenses. Other proposals would establish certification and peer-review programs for malpractice lawyers. If instituted, they would be the first in the country, according to the Association of Trial Attorneys of America.

While the Westway saga has had more false finales than Beethoven's Ninth, a few chords struck last week suggested that a conclusion might finally be in sight. In separate developments, a Federal appeals court upheld the key portion of a lower court ruling that barred Westway's construction, and the House of Representatives voted to block Federal funds for the proposed $2 billion highway and development project. Neither action delt a fatal blow to Westway, but together they indicated that the obstacles facing its proponents have become immense.

As for the President's principal priority, tax revision, the heavy going is also still to come.

Personal income for August is expected to rise by four-tenths of 1 percent, the same increase seen in July, according to Martin Mauro, senior economist at Merrill Lynch Economics. A few weeks ago, said Mr. Mauro, he was predicting a smaller increase, but ''employment growth was stronger than we expected.'' Earlier this month, the Government reported that non-farm payrolls grew by 288,000 in August and that unemployment, after many months at 7.2 percent, dipped to 6.9 percent. From the current trend in personal income, Mr. Mauro is predicting real gross national product growth of 3.1 percent in the third quarter and 2.3 percent in the fourth.

COMMON GROUND A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. By J. Anthony Lukas. 659 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $19.95. THIS is a huge and marvelous work, many years in the making. It has the feel of a project that simply grew until it had almost taken on a life of its own - ideas generating ideas, information creating information, the study itself maturing according to a calendar of its own devising. That J. Anthony Lukas could master so much material and make such good sense of it is one of the book's marvels.

CYBEX, a manufacturer of physical-therapy and fitness equipment, began exporting its products 12 years ago almost by chance. ''Someone came to the door and said we want one of those, and we said O.K.,'' said Sandy London, Cybex's manager of international operations. Last year, exports accounted for 11.3 percent of the company's business, and overseas sales have increased an average of 35 percent in each of the last three years. The experience of Cybex, a division of Lumex Inc. of Ronkonkoma, mirrors that of many Long Island manufacturers. But in recent months, the strong dollar, which has made American goods more costly overseas, has hurt sales at Cybex and at many of the estimated 1,000 other exporters on Long Island. However, local export volume will rise 6 percent over last year to $2 billion in 1985, projects the World Trade Club, a Long Island association of importers and exporters. Nationwide, the United States Department of Commerce expects exports to increase just 0.1 percent.

In downtown Albany, in an area near the State Capitol that is undergoing public and private revitalization, an $18 million office and retail complex will be built for Keycorp by the Omni Development Corporation. ''Our hope is our project will be an anchor for redevelopment of that part of downtown south of State Street,'' said Allen J. Volkenant, executive vice president at Keycorp, a financial company that owns the Key Bank.