“New York and New Yorkers loved the Rainbow Room,” said the restaurateur Drew Nieporent. “It’s just one of a kind — the building itself, and it was a destination for both food, wine and song. And certainly some of the greatest parties I’ve ever attended were in that room.”

The application for the landmark designation is a remnant of an angry feud between the Cipriani family, which ran the Rainbow Room, and Tishman Speyer Properties, which had been the landlord since the late 1990s. It was the Ciprianis who filed the application to the landmarks commission, perhaps knowing that landlords sometimes oppose landmark status because it limits the alterations they can make. And limiting the way a space can be remodeled can limit the way it can be used or the rent that can be charged.

They have been out of the picture since 2009, when Tishman Speyer evicted them, but the landmarks commission takes its time. There are no big-tipping customers anymore, just prospective restaurateurs and real estate types. For a restaurant that figured in so many first nights, so many first dates, so many boldface encounters, it is impossible to know how many bottles of Champagne were not drunk, how many dances were not danced, how many anniversaries were not celebrated, how many famous elbows were not rubbed.

Today, three years after the last table was cleared, the exact condition of the Rainbow Room is unclear — Tishman Speyer refused to let a reporter or a photographer inside. For its part, the landmarks commission sees a lot that could merit landmark status. “It retains many of its original features and characteristics,” Matthew A. Postal, a staff researcher who went there twice while preparing a report for the commission, said at its session on Tuesday.