May 25, 1986

Conforming with the surrounding residential neighborhood of late 19th century houses, a development group in Southport, Conn., is constructing a three-story clapboard office building with many Victorian design elements. Because the 23,500-square-foot office building, called 107 John Street, will be much bigger than anything else in the neighborhood, the architect, Bruce Campbell Graham of Westport, Conn., said he tried to ''break it up into smaller pieces so the massiveness of it was disgused somewhat.''

HIGH on everyone's lists of countries favored to win the World Cup are France and Argentina, and high among the reasons are the team captains, Michel Platini and Diego Armando Maradona, two players who vie for the unofficial title of the world's best. Two players who - like so many of the world's top stars -have left their native lands to play in the soccer El Dorado that is Italy. There they each earn salaries of close to $1 million a year and employ agents and business managers to handle their affairs. Lucrative affairs indeed: Platini is estimated to have earned nearly $2 million from commercial contracts and investments in 1985. The 30-year-old Platini, his curly hair covering protruding ears that used to be mocked by his school friends, is of lean and athletic build and plays with a simple, spare elegance. Despite a short, dark beard, Maradona's face at age 25 retains a boyish openness. From his stocky powerful body (''Don't worry,'' the midwife is supposed to have told his mother at his birth, ''this boy is all muscle'') flows the explosive brilliance of his play. Platini plays for Juventus in the northern Italian city of Turin, and Maradona is with Naples, in the South. These two vastly different cities reflect, in so many ways, the differences between the players and their styles.

The afternoon lacked artistic excellence. It was, as far as the Yankees were concerned, a day full of untimely blunders: six errors that led to three unearned runs by the California Angels. But there was also redemption. Mike Pagliarulo, who made two errors at third base and dropped a ball that helped the Angels tie the game in the top of the ninth inning, hit a decisive single through the right side of the infield in the bottom of the ninth that lifted the Yankees to a 7-6 victory yesterday at the Stadium. Pagliarulo's hit scored Ken Griffey from third base to give the Yankees their fourth straight victory and sixth in seven games. Griffey, bothered by tendinitis in both Achilles tendons, had come off the bench in the seventh inning to deliver a two-run homer off Donnie Moore and give the Yanks a 5-4 lead. Dave Winfield then stretched it to 6-4 with a towering home run to left that struck the foul-pole screen near the upper deck. But it did not stand up. The Yankees, some of whom were critical of the condition of the infield, had not made six errors in a game since Aug. 24, 1975.

''WE'RE not a bank,'' says Robert C. Wright, president of the General Electric Credit Corporation, with a note of disdain in his voice for banks. But perhaps the man protests too much. In the era of deregulation, G.E. Credit is emerging as a tough and innovative competitor for much more familiar giants of banking and finance such as Citicorp, Merrill Lynch and American Express. Consider its ingenuity: * Finding a new market. Many ill Americans are getting hospital bills that exceed their health insurance coverage. For G.E. Credit, that means opportunity. Early this year, it began offering a credit line of up to $5,000 to some hospital patients. The credit kicks in when a patient's insurance runs out. G.E. Credit says it expects to lend $100 million to patients this year, charging about 18 percent annual interest.

The last time Monroe, N.Y., a small town in southeastern Orange County, drew wide attention was in 1976 when a group of Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn chose the community as the site for a new village. Since then the bedroom community of about 15,000 people has been quietly experiencing strong growth as the suburban communities closer to the city became saturated.