October 8, 1982

THE first thing that should be said about TriBeCa is that it is not SoHo. The two neighborhoods, which abut each other at Canal Street, can seem similar - they both contain residential lofts housed in some of the city's finest 19th-century industrial and commercial architecture; they have fashionable restaurants and, superficially at least, similar populations to fill them, and they both have a kind of grittiness to them that makes clear that, however strong the signs of prosperity, these places are not the Upper East Side. But there the similarity ends. TriBeCa, which roughly includes the blocks west of Broadway and south of Canal Street to Chambers Street (the name comes from the words TRiangle BElow CAnal), is a rich amalgam of architecture, much of it in masonry, where SoHo is essentially a unified composition of block after block of cast-iron fronts. TriBeCa is more diverse in its uses and its population than SoHo, too: there are fewer boutiques, fewer art galleries, and there is never the sense, as there is on a Saturday in SoHo, that the neighborhood belongs entirely to people who do not live in it.

The nation's major banks dropped the prime lending rate to 13 percent from 13 1/2 percent yesterday, a reaction to the continuing decline in the cost of money to the banks. The move was hailed as overdue by economists, some of whom predicted that there would be a further drop of perhaps a half-point in the benchmark rate. The prime rate is used by banks to calculate the interest rates to customers with top credit ratings. The interest rates for large corporations are generally below the prime rate, while loans to most small and medium-sized businesses are closely tied to it.

On the eve of a parliamentary session that is expected to outlaw the independent Solidarity union, the Polish Government has been seizing opposition activists and bracing itself for any flurry of demonstrations. The Government's prize catch - a sharp blow to the fugitive union leadership - is Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, the Silesian labor chief and one of the organizers of the union's five-man underground coordinating committee. Thus far, there has been no response from the Solidarity underground to the plans to enact the long-awaited trade union bill at the session of Parliament opening on Friday. An attempt was made Wednesday to broadcast a clandestine Solidarity message over the radio, but the signal was so weak that it could not be made out.

The financial markets rallied dramatically yesterday, fueled by hopes that interest rates would continue to decline.Stock market volume surged to a record level of 147.1 million shares and prices rose sharply. In the credit markets, interest rates tumbled and prices of Government notes and bonds soared. The dollar plummeted, while prices of gold and silver climbed. Most of the nation's major banks cut their prime rate, or what they charge their key corporate customers for loans, by half a percentage point, to 13 percent, the lowest rate in two years.

Warner Communications Inc., a media conglomerate, said yesterday that it had reached an agreement to buy the Madison Fund Inc., a New York-based investment managment company. Under the terms of the deal, Madison shareholders will exchange all their stock for Warner debentures and warrants, and Madison will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Warner. Geoffrey W. Holmes, a Warner spokesman, said that Warner will then sell off the Madison Fund's assets - basically its stock portfolio - and use the proceeds in part to meet short-term debt obligations, which amount to ''over $500 million.'' Net Assets of $380 Million The Madison Fund, with a net asset value of $380 million, will in effect disappear. ''We are not going into the mutual fund business,'' Mr. Holmes said.