September 15, 1985

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.''