November 9, 1986

THE third plan for a permanent home for the Chicago Public Library was shot down recently, leaving the collection in the ''temporary'' quarters it has occupied for the last 11 years. City officials have discarded a 1983 plan to renovate a former Goldblatt Brothers department store at 333 South State Street into permanent quarters for the library after the Union League Club, the Better Government Association and other civic groups criticized it as too expensive and structurally deficient. Hundreds of thousands of books have been in storage since 1975, when the old central library at Michigan Avenue and Washington Street was transformed into the Cultural Center. At that time, the central library was moved to a 13-story former warehouse at 425 North Michigan Avenue.

There will be gingerbread, cedar fish-scale shingles, oval windows, spindled cornices, even etched glass on the front doors. ''We wanted a true Victorian look and we achieved it,'' said Ronald Acquaviva, the developer of Holmdel Mews, the first condominium town-house complex in Holmdel, N.J. The project, with five designs of two- and three-bedrooms, each with 2 1/2 bathrooms, full basement and fireplace, is nearing completion on Union Avenue just east of Route 35.

SHORTLY before the release last week of David P. Jacobsen, an American who had been held hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian Shiite Moslems, a Danish freighter reported to be carrying military supplies left the Israeli port of Eilat bound for Bandar Abbas, Iran. According to officials in Jerusalem and Washington, it was the latest episode in a secret program by the Reagan Administration to use shipments of military equipment for two purposes: in the short run to buy freedom for American hostages, and in the longer term to maintain contact with moderate elements in the Iranian officer corps in the hope of repairing relations with whatever rulers follow Iran's fundamentalist leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Reports of the arms deliveries surfaced after the Iranian press agency reported that Robert C. McFarlane, the former White House national security adviser, flew to Teheran on a secret mission earlier this fall carrying a cake shaped like a key and a Bible signed by President Reagan - peace offerings of a sort. Mr. McFarlane declined to comment. Whether or not the bizarre details were true, experts figured that such a trip would not have been made without encouragement from some Iranian political faction. Secretary of State George P. Shultz also declined to comment, but State Department officials said the situation had strained relations between him and the White House because he had opposed the covert mission. ''If the Secretary is going to resign over something, this is it,'' one of his aides said.

While the superpowers negotiate possible cuts in nuclear weapons, some nations are expanding their nuclear arsenals and others are joining the ranks of those possessing or able to build such arms. The extent of the nuclear spread is suggested by the growing probability that Israel is a nuclear power, by the ability of India and Pakistan to produce weapons if they choose and by the French and British arsenals. Peter Clawson of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass., said in an interview that Soviet-American arms reductions might draw China, France and Britain into cuts, and Soviet-American restraints on nuclear testing could lend credibility to calls for smaller nations not to test. But he added that it was not clear if Pakistan, India or Israel could be dissuaded. '68 Treaty on Nuclear Spread In theory, any country with an uncontrolled civilian nuclear power program can divert nuclear materials from peaceful use to weapons. In the 1960's, in an effort to curb the spread of weapons beyond the nations that already had them, the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain completed a treaty on nonproliferation.

One of this century's most famous works of insouciant avant-gardism returns for a rare New York production starting Wednesday - the opera ''Four Saints in Three Acts'' by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. It has now been 52 years since its premiere, and 58 years since the completion of the actual composition. Yet this seemingly nonsensical assemblage of childlike rhymes (''Pigeons in the grass alas''), amiable vocalized conversation and sing-song music retains a freshness and a nose-thumbing vivacity that so many trendy succes de scandale lose within minutes. What makes ''Four Saints'' so special? The explanations for its importance and buoyant tenacity are many, and as he geared up for the public and private celebrations of his 90th birthday this month (the actual date is Nov. 25), Mr. Thomson took time in his Chelsea Hotel apartment to discuss some of them. So did the director and the designer of the Opera Ensemble of New York's new production, John J. D. Sheehan and Rouben Ter-Arutunian, at the company's headquarters at the Lillie Blake School (P.S. 6), 45 East 81st Street, where their staging will run for nine performances through Nov. 30.