August 9, 1981

B ANKS will never be the same. The industry is facing one of its greatest economic challenges and, according to many banking officials and analysts, it will either change or perish. Whatever the outcome, things promise to be different. At the heart of the problem is that there just is not enough room in today's - much less tomorrow's - economy for 15,000 commercial banks and another 30,000 non-bank financial institutions. The economy has not shrunk, but inflation and the computer have so transformed the nation's financial character that old-time banking is obsolete. Communications and computers have vastly increased the speed and efficiency of moving money and made it possible for a host of nonfinancial companies to offer their own version of traditional banking services. Companies are neither as dependent on banks as they once were, nor are banks able to sustain their traditional nearmonopoly in performing banking services. And while the financial business has become a free-for-all for nonbanks, banks are still operating under rules and regulations that were designed for another era. The fear in banking is that unless it is allowed to change it will go the way of the railroads, which fell by the wayside in an age of superhighways and jet planes.

The Giants outpassed, outran and outkicked the Chicago Bears tonight. Neill Armstrong, the Bears' coach, said the Giants played with more intensity. With all that, plus two brave decisions by Coach Ray Perkins, the Giants won, 23-7, in the first exhibition game for the National Football League teams. Perkins's first key decision came when he called for a pass on an obvious running play. The Giants scored a touchdown on the play, Phil Simms to Tom Mullady. The second big decision involved surrendering a field goal, and that paid off in a touchdown, too.

HARTFORD THE task of trying to redraw Connecticut's six Congressional districts, which now will be taken on by a nine-member commission, has become a high-stakes political struggle with national as well as statewide implications. If a majority of the commission is able to agree on new districts for the 1982 Congressional elections, their product could go a long way toward determining whether the state's Congressional delegation will continue for the next decade with its current split of four Democrats and two Republicans, or whether the Republicans can pick up one or two seats. Republicans and Democrats on the General Assembly's Reapportionment Committee, which deadlocked over the Congressional district lines, denied that they were getting any pressure from national party officials. ''I got more flak from the Congressmen themselves than from anybody else in Washington,'' said one Republican member of the committee.

FOR the voter who may be assigned new representatives in Hartford and Washington and for the politician who may inherit several thousand new constituents, reapportionment can be a confusing experience. It can also cause practical problems. In Manchester, for example, so drastic were the changes in the state's House and Senate districts in 1970 that mechanics put the names of the wrong candidates on the voting machines. In Westport, some voters were still going to the wrong polling place as late as 1979.

In the four tournaments Larry Nelson has won, he led going into the last round. So when the placid Georgian shot 66 today for a four-stroke lead after the third round of the Professional Golfers' Association Championship, the opposition had little reason to expect Nelson to falter. ''If a guy has a temper you have a chance,'' said Fuzzy Zoeller. ''But Larry's real cool.'' Tom Kite observed, ''Larry's a streaky player, and when he's on he's very, very good. This is a perfect golf course for his type of game.''

WEEHAWKEN THE Democratic and Republican members of this township's governing body, who don't often agree, are doing so these days on at least one thing: This Hudson River community of 13,000 people, they all concede, is in deep trouble. Among the signs of the trouble, according to Township Commissioner Michael Tabat, a Democrat, are: - The township's two garbage trucks are being held hostage by a local car repair dealer who refuses to return them because the township can't afford to pay its repair bill. - The sewers are collapsing and sewage is backing up into some houses. - One third of the township's 150 employees were laid off in the spring and recreation programs have been severely cut back. Perhaps the most pointedly symbolic sign is the steps of the Town Hall; they are cracked throughout. The township's biggest employer, Seatrain, filed in bankruptcy in February, thus drying up 20 percent of the town's revenues. Only special state legislation signed by Governor Byrne last spring prevented Weehawken's $64 tax rate from rising 40 percent.

The Third Avenue Elevated has long since vanished, as have Third Avenue's cobblestones and bishop's crook lampposts. As the girded clutter was cleared, the saloons, shops and tenements that thrived under the El's trestles and web-like shadows gave way in the late 1950's to rectilinear office towers in midtown, many with little architectural distinction. A second generation of office buildings is now emerging that will nearly complete the transformation of the avenue from rows of ramshackle railroad flats to a broad boulevard with a distinctive character. Interviews with real estate developers and brokers suggest that the new wave of buildings - either in construction or in advanced stages of planning - will provide an assemblage that is as diverse and interesting as the one developing at present on Madison Avenue in the 50's. Rents for the best new space on Third Avenue are now in the range of $35 to $42 a square foot, according to John L. Dowling, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the leasing and managing agent for the new office tower planned by Jacobo Finkielstain, an Argentine developer, at 900 Third Avenue at 54th Street. Those rates are comparable to those for the Avenue of the Americas and slightly lower than those of Park Avenue.

President Reagan alarmed the arts community last Feb. 18 when he announced before a joint session of Congress that Federal aid to the arts and humanities would have to suffer severe cutbacks - at least as great as the cutbacks he was proposing for a host of other social programs. For example, instead of boosting the budget for the National Endowment for the Humanities to $176 million as had been proposed by President Carter, Mr. Reagan wanted Congress to chop that grant by $85 million. The Arts Endowment would be similarly dealth with. Certainly, these cuts were tiny compared to the $40 billion in budget cuts that the President was asking for, but the world of the arts is especially sensitive - and vocal, as the President was soon to learn. Later, there was talk from the Administration about abolishing the two Endowments altogether, and supplanting them with an agency or agencies capable of seeking funds from private sources. To many stunned observers, it seemed that the day was fast approaching when the Federal Government would cease to be the significant patron of the arts and humanities that it had gradually become over the past two decades.

BELLEVILLE IN THE shadow of the Essex County Geriatric Center, 16 boys and girls play in the dirt next to their home, the county's Center for Abused and Abandoned Children. Larry, a curly-haired 12-year-old, has been living at the shelter for two months and believes it's all his fault. ''I was acting up,'' he said, looking down at his hands. ''I was doing everything that was wrong. I'd mess up in school, and mess up at home.'' Before Larry came to the shelter, his mother was hospitalized and his father had sent him to stay with an aunt and uncle. Nadine, a thin-faced girl of 12 in a blue halter and shorts, was fixing her 8-year-old sister's hair. They and their 16-year-old sister have been at the center for five months and haven't seen their mother for five years.

After pushing through the most far-reaching changes in government spending since Franklin Roosevelt, President Reagan has flown to California for a month-long holiday. As Mr. Reagan basks in triumph, his next step is likely to be much less palatable to him. Government spending continues to rise, and next month the President is almost sure to ask Congress to raise the Federal debt ceiling. The next push will send that debt past $1 trillion. Without further budget cuts, that increase will likely not be the last.

Suffolk County's trend-setting Farmlands appears to have reached a crucial stage as the County Legislature prepares to vote on a measure to appropriate additional funds. If the Program is to proceed, the county must spend more money and must also continue to win the confidence of farmers and preservationists. If supporters of the program can get 12 of the 18 legislators to fote for a $10.5 million appropriation, the program will continue. If not, the program, which has been in existence since the mid-1970's, could come to an end, falling far short of its originators' expectations. The end of the program would also most likely cause farmers to attempt to save their land on their own. It would probably also cause more towns to initiate their own means of preserving farmlands.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- HELEN LAWRENSON counts 70 American and British publications in which her work has appeared. She is the author of five books, and lives in New York City. American travelers are always looking for new places to go, places not yet swarming with package tours, places relatively free from chronic hurricanes, cyclones, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes - or bugs in the salad. Above all, in these parlous times, they seek a safe place. Their idea of a happy holiday does not include political turmoil, riots, coups, revolutions, crime in the streets, or the sporadic bomb. This can limit their choice of destination, except for determinedly rugged types who opt for Antarctica. Well, where else? It was the late actor Peter Finch who told me about Lugano, a town in southern Switzerland that stands on the edge of Lake Lugano, the other shores of which are Italian. He and his wife had a house in Ruvigliana, one of the many small villages that dot the hills above the lake. ''Great scenery, clean air, good food,'' Finch said.