December 1, 1983

The plans for Bryant Park change it markedly while preserving its best features. An appraisal, page B2. An unusual public-private partnership is planning an $18 million redevelopment of Bryant Park that will include a huge glass restaurant, a cascading fountain with reflecting pools, four food kiosks and a permanent security force. The design would fill the nine-acre greensward behind the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42d Street with tables and chairs for 4,000 people. It was prepared by the nonprofit Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, the New York Public Library and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Large pension funds and other institutions may have fueled the bull market over the past year, but so too did married, working, college-educated women in their 30's, who were living in large metropolitan areas and were members of households with incomes of just over $30,000. That is the profile of the typical new stock market investor, according to a New York Stock Exchange survey made public today. The exchange found that 42.4 million Americans, or a record 18.1 percent of the population, owned shares either directly or through mutual funds. The figure was up from 14.4 percent in 1981, when the last survey was conducted, and 11.9 percent in 1975, and does not include stocks that individuals own indirectly through pension funds.

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the big industrial conglomerate, has a microwave radio system that permits telephoning among its 22 buildings in or around Pittsburgh without using the local phone company's lines. The arrangement deprives Bell of Pennysylvania of $500,000 to $1 million a year in transmission revenues and even more in equipment rentals. Westinghouse is only one of many big companies finding more and more ways to get along without the telephone company. Increasingly, businesses are exploiting new technology to make their calls or transmit data, both locally and over long distance, without using local phone lines. And as businesses reduce their reliance on the telephone network, rates for other telephone users may have to go up, to make up for the lost revenues. Exactly how fast or furiously this phenomenon - which is known as bypass - will unfold is hotly debated. Some say the trend is greatly overblown. Still others say, however, that with the breaking up of the Bell System Jan. 1, bypass will accelerate. In any case, the phone companies have apparently concluded that bypass cannot be halted: Rather than fighting the trend, many are gearing up to compete with other companies in offering bypass services.

Ten policemen raided an unguarded warehouse here today and freed the kidnapped brewery chairman, Alfred H. Heineken, and his chauffeur from unheated concrete cells in which they had been chained for 21 days. The police later arrested 24 suspects, all Dutch citizens related to each other by blood or marriage, and said they were hunting for four others. The rescue of the two men, who were said to be cold but in good health, came two days after a ransom payment rumored to exceed $10 million was made on a road outside the central Dutch city of Utrecht. At least part of the ransom was reportedly recovered in the homes of the suspects in Amsterdam, in suburban Zwanenburg and in Helder, a port 50 miles to the north.

BILLY BALDWIN always insisted that he never originated anything in decorating. Yet, the Baltimore-born decorator, who died at the age of 80 last Friday on Nantucket, left an indelible stamp on American interiors. His rooms sparkled with freshness and a sense of ease, qualities rooted in his love of Matisse, his Southern past and his talent for eliminating whatever he deemed superfluous. The decorating prescriptions devised by Mr. Baldwin, a small, impeccably dressed man known for his sharp eye and sharper tongue, were executed for wealthy, socially secure clients. In diluted form they swept through post-World War II America: colorful rooms, generously patterned and furnished with plump upholstered seating.