December 2, 1990

Few of my generation were alive for, much less remember, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but the oldest of us, even at age 2, could sense something had gone wrong. For the rest of our childhood, things seemed to go the same way. Vietnam assaulted us on the evening news. For the youngest of us, it was Nixon vs. McGovern, Sonny and Cher, Watergate, the Bradys, biorhythms, est, "Jaws" and "Dark Shadows" in the afternoons. This was our childhood.

THE high-rise residential market here, which in the past has been limited to a few scattered projects, is experiencing a burst of construction. Four rental or condominium towers have opened in the central city in the last year and four more are being built. "Not everyone wants to live in the suburbs anymore," said Frank Howington, president of the E. F. Howington Company of Atlanta, which is renovating the old Georgian Terrace Hotel into luxury rental units.

When Nynex sought permission to put a cellular telephone system substation under a tram tower on Roosevelt Island, residents agreed but asked for something besides rent on the site in return. As a result, Nynex will put a landscaped observation deck on the roof of the substation. The agreement, negotiated by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, calls for Nynex to pay about $250,000 in rent over a 10-year period, contribute $75,000 toward a project to stabilize the tower and pay for building the observation deck. Daniel Kime, a spokesman for Nynex Mobile Communications Company, said that Nynex approached the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation because the island seemed the best place for a substation that would let the company strengthen service for customers in parts of the East Side of Manhattan, where signals have been weakened by the F.D.R. Drive's tunnels and overhangs. The substation will be a 20- by 20-foot reinforced concrete structure about 10 feet high holding an antenna, switching equipment and air-conditioners. It will be built on a slope that rises from the East River just to the west of the tram station. Lee Weintraub and John di Domenico, Manhattan landscape architects, will collaborate with the sculptor Donna Dennis on the design of the deck. Nynex hopes to have the station operating by March and the observation deck open later in the spring.

IN a second-floor hall of Lawler Towers, a public housing complex here, a white-haired man with a cane was quick to scoff at accusations made about the township's Housing Authority in a recent Federal report. "It's tremendous here," he said. But a woman who lives in the same complex had a different opinion about the agency. "Let's be honest about it -- I think it stinks," said the woman, who like the man insisted on anonymity. She then ran quickly through a long list of criticisms of the North Bergen Housing Authority, stressing "nepotism" and "all that deadwood" in the authority's office. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently released the findings compiled by a strike force set up to examine 11 public housing authorities in New Jersey -- results that a H.U.D. official summarized as "disheartening." Deficiencies like excessive salaries and benefits, unnecessary staff members, widespread nepotism, sloppy record-keeping and violations of purchasing regulations were cited in almost every authority surveyed in the state. "It is quite apparent," Joseph Schiff, a H.U.D. deputy secretary, wrote in the 159-page report, "that some executive directors and commissioners have treated their P.H.A.'s as private kingdoms, to the ultimate detriment of the residents and the American taxpayer."

DON'T be fooled by the mild-mannered name. Members of the Native Plant Society of New Jersey are determined warriors in the battle to save the state's endangered native plants. Their weapons are plastic bags, shovels and a fierce love for the thousands of wild species that grow in New Jersey's rapidly disappearing open spaces.

The four old brownstones on Madison Avenue at 126th Street had stood mostly empty for years, housing only the offices of the Association of Black Social Workers, but with the potential to shelter several families within their walls some day. That day is now at hand, as the Harlem Urban Development Corporation puts the finishing touches on its $1.9 million gut rehabilitation of the buildings. They stand two blocks north of Marcus Garvey Park. The results of the work are 16 large two and three-bedroom apartments for poor and moderate-income renters, a long common basement community center, a large, landscaped common yard in back, and some new offices for the social workers' group, the nonprofit sponsor of the housing project. The development is called the Cenie J. Williams Jr. Houses after the founder of the Association of Black Social Workers, whose members will use the open basement for counseling their clients. There are 13 two-bedroom apartments and three with three-bedrooms. Two of the smaller apartments will be reserved, under city law, for the homeless, which includes familes doubled up with others. Leases will be assigned by lottery over the next few months. Rents for the two homeless-tenant apartments will be set at welfare levels, depending on the number of children in the tenant families. Maximum incomes for the remaining low-income units will be $22,140 for the two-bedroom units renting at no more than $518, and $25,680 for the three-bedrooms, which will have a top rent of $603, according to Mike Rodell, director of housing for the Harlem Urban Development Corporation. "Brownstones are inherently nice places to live, and these have become some of the best ones we have seen," said Mr. Rodell.

Gene and Robert Pressman are like brothers from different planets. Gene, long haired and laid back, preferring jeans and blazer to a suit, went to film school and worked as a go-fer in Hollywood before bringing women's fashion to the family business, Barneys New York. Robert, at 36, is three years' Gene's junior; he is close cropped and buttoned down, has an M.B.A. and runs the financial side of the company. In an era of retail retrenchment, it may be just this mix -- innovative fashion merchandiser and sober financier -- coupled with rich Japanese backers that will make Barneys fly as other retailers flounder. While in malls and on Main Street fashion industry executives are struggling just to survive, the Pressmans have been thinking: the world.

Students who are attracted to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in lower Manhattan certainly do not expect to live in a cloistered campus. But they expect to live somewhere. "When people refused the offer to come to Cooper Union, the reason most often cited was the lack of available housing," said John Clarke, the acting chairman of the school's building committee. As a result, the 131-year-old school is developing its own housing: a 15-story structure for 193 students in apartment-like suites accommodating three to five people. The building is to rise at an obliquely angled site on Stuyvesant Street, across Third Avenue from the Cooper Union Engineering Building, at Ninth Street, and one block north of the Foundation Building, as the school's original landmark structure is known. Construction is to be financed with tax-free bonds issued by the New York State Dormitory Authority. Mr. Clarke said the school was now awaiting contractors' bids and anticipated that construction would begin in February, with the building open in time for the 1992-93 school year. The building is to be clad in what he described as a brownstone-colored brick, with sash windows, an undisguised water tank and a recessed light fixture running the height of its south wall, which is on a lot line. The architect is Rolf Ohlhausen of Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen, a Manhattan firm selected by the trustees from among three competitors. Cooper Union has slightly more than 1,000 students enrolled in its School of Art, in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering and in the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Tuition is free, supported by an endowment established by the industrialist Peter Cooper. A student apartment, however, will probably cost $2,300 a semester. "This housing is primarily directed at students entering Cooper Union as freshmen," Mr. Clarke said. "If you're 18 years old, it's a pretty daunting idea to move into the Lower East Side and live on your own. But our experience is that once students get there, and get to know the Lower East Side and get to know other students, they'll go off to find their own accommodations. This is really a stepping stone."

PRESIDENT BUSH demonstrated last week that to build support for war in the Persian Gulf he must prove his dedication to peace. That was the message inherent in the events of a week in which expressions of hope for peace increased significantly, as did prospects for war. On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council authorized member states to use force to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait if they have not withdrawn by Jan. 15. The next day, President Bush suddenly reversed his longstanding position against direct high-level talks with Iraq: he said he would invite Iraq's Foreign Minister to Washington and was prepared to send Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d to Baghdad to talk to President Saddam Hussein. Iraq accepted the idea of a meeting.

SEVENTY-FIVE years after an elegant epoch in domestic architecture created some of New York's grandest houses on the blocks just east of Fifth Avenue, a new generation of affluent owners is putting opulent 1990's-style residences behind their richly embellished facades. Many of these buildings had become schools and foundation offices, and the current remodelings represent a return to the single-family occupancy they were built for. But in their new state they will have amenities never thought of by their builders, such as complete climate-control systems, rooms with a panoply of facsimile machines and other communications devices, multiple guest suites and, in one case, separate temperature-controlled wine cellars for red and white wines.

WHEN ANJELICA HUSton took on the part of Lily, the flinty con artist who is the emotional axis of "The Grifters," she set out to give the character a flesh-and-blood reality in her own mind. The film adaptation of the Jim Thompson novel of the same title opens Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles just long enough to qualify for Academy Award consideration,

Iraq announced today that it would accept President Bush's offer of direct talks intended to avert war over Kuwait. "We accept the idea of the invitation and the meeting," the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, the nation's policy-making body, said in a statement made public by the official Iraqi press agency. The council is tightly controlled by President Saddam Hussein.