January 20, 1991

GLASS and granite are beginning to sheath two of four office buidldings going up in the 17-acre Water Garden here, a project likely to be the last of its scope for some time because of new density restrictions and a commercial construction moratorium in this cramped seaside community. "The door shut right behind us," said Jerome H. Snyder, principal of the J. H. Snyder Company of Los Angeles, which is developing the $450 million, 1.26 million-square-foot complex with the Miller Klutznick Davis Gray Company of Denver. It will have one five-story building and three of six stories.

HOW does a Franciscan priest, who once took vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, end up booking acts for a Boardwalk casino? Answer: through a tumultuous midlife crisis. Actually, the "crisis" for 39-year-old Bill Gaydos, now director of entertainment for Tropworld, one of the city's 12 casinos, took place in his late 20's, a bit before life's midway mark. But by that time he had spent so many years preparing himself for the priesthood that his career represented a huge chunk of his life, if not his entire identity.

What may be Manhattan's most exceptional pied-a-terre -- a Beaux-Arts mansion at Fifth Avenue and 82d Street that has belonged to the same family since the century began -- is on the market. But Mary Duke Biddle Semans, whose grandfather moved into the newly finished house in 1901, hopes to keep part of the dwelling for her visits from Durham, N.C. "She loves that house -- her grandfather's house, her mother's house -- and she's looking for a sympathetic co-owner," said Bradford Garnett of the Coldwell Banker Commercial brokerage, who represents Mrs. Semans.

During the 60's and 70's, Orsini's restaurant drew a glittering crowd to the town house at 41 West 56th Street with a dining room that served up classic Italian cuisine to patrons like Jacqueline Onassis and Gloria Vanderbilt. Orsini's left in 1984 and later operated on East 63d Street, but the 56th Street building failed to re-establish itself as a venue for fashionable dining. Bon Vivant Properties Corporation of Dallas tried but failed to open a French restaurant in the town house. Now a group of Japanese investors, AFK-USA Inc. of Los Angeles, which paid $3.8 million for the empty five-story building between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, is giving it a go. The owners are turning the house into a restaurant and private club to be known as the Japan Tea Club. Construction is underway and the plans call for the ground floor through the third level to be a bar, restaurant and catering establishment open to the public and for the fourth level to serve as a private club. The top floor will have office space and showers and lockers for club members.

IT takes a long time to plan a war, but it takes an even longer time to design a peace. Many people are already beginning to ask: If the anti-Iraq coalition emerges victorious from this conflict, what will the peace look like and how long will the United States have to remain heavily involved in the Persian Gulf? In the wake of any American victory, Washington's political influence in the region could be greater than at any other time in the postwar era. Even before the war, Soviet involvement in the Middle East was on the wane, or, as Saddam Hussein derisively put it, Moscow had pulled a "disappearing act." It is quite possible that when the smoke clears America will find itself the only superpower in the Middle East and its greatest enemy might well be the illusions that naturally attend victory -- illusions about how much any outside power can reorder an ancient region that has so long defied reordering.