April 15, 2001

AT the New York International Automobile Show two years ago, the black-clad cast of the Broadway show ''Chicago'' slithered and snapped their fingers under white-hot lights as Karen Francis, then the general manager of Oldsmobile, introduced a new Aurora. ''Chicago'' is still playing on Broadway, but much has changed at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, where the 2001 show opened this weekend. Oldsmobile is on its way to oblivion. Ms. Francis is long gone from General Motors -- she joined Internet Capital Group, then landed at Ford. And razzle-dazzle is in short supply. Befitting the uncertain auto market, which is anxious after two years of record sales, last week's press previews for the show, and the parties that punctuated those introductions, seemed decidedly low-key.

What is ethical architecture? Can ethics and architecture co-exist? What role does the architect play in the ethics of building? These and other questions will be discussed on Saturday at a conference of architects, educators, theologians and clergy at St. James Chapel of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street. The public is invited; there is a $20 donation at the door.

The fire in the garment factory began on the fourth floor, where polo shirts, neatly folded in boxes, made a fine feast for the hungry flames. The 1,250 workers scampered for their lives, most of them hurrying to the stairway that led to the main exit. There, at the bottom, was a folding gate. It was locked. In panic, the trapped people spun around, rushing back up the steps, colliding with those coming down. It was night. The lights had gone out. Some workers squeezed through windows, shimmying down an outside pipe or chancing a desperate leap.

President Bush, who lavished attention on California during the presidential campaign last year, appears to have relegated the state to political purgatory, reflecting his advisers' judgment that he cannot win there in 2004.

It will be a surreal burial. The Bettmann archive, the quirky cache of pictures that Otto Bettmann sneaked out of Nazi Germany in two steamer trunks in 1935 and then built into an enormous collection of historical importance, will be sunk 220 feet down in a limestone mine situated 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, where it will be far from the reach of historians. The archive, which is estimated to have as many as 17 million photographs, is a visual history of the 20th century. Since 1995 it has belonged to Corbis, the private company of Microsoft's chairman, William H. Gates.