June 5, 1988

LEAD: THE long, long, long Presidential nominating season essentially ends this week - not with a bang, not with a whimper, perhaps with a sigh of relief. After the California, New Jersey, Montana and New Mexico primaries on Tuesday, the nation moves on to the nominating conventions and the fall campaign.

LEAD: Cabot, Cabot & Forbes built its first business park - the first in the United States, its officials say - in 1947. The 200-acre office and warehouse complex on Route 128 in Needham, Mass., became home to five tire companies, several shoe companies and the American Can Company. Now, after developing 100 such complexes, the 91-year-old Boston firm owned by Marshall Field 5th and his family is about to begin a 145-acre business park in Hamilton Township, N.J.

LEAD: FOR several years, it has been predicted that American corporations would be the new Medicis. Federal budgets for art are routinely cut, and works paid for with government money are often a source of dispute. On the other hand, art placed by private companies around their grounds and in their boardrooms has a cachet for the corporation and materially rewards the artist, but not many people get to look at it.

LEAD: BOTH the county and the Metro-North Commuter Railroad stepped back from a showdown over the fate of a New Rochelle bridge last Wednesday without either side conceding that it had blinked.

LEAD: Gone is the Bayard Estate where Alexander Hamilton died after his duel with Aaron Burr. And gone is the Christopher Street pier from which Robert Fulton launched his first steamboat. But still standing are Pier 54 where the Titanic was expected to berth and the Jane Street Hotel where its survivors were tended.