They come in wearing teetery heels and ironed hair, English wedding hats and silk mini-skirts. They have lithe bodies and worked-on faces, some so worked-on as to resemble avant-garde collages of features.

It’s not the food that draws people to Harry Cipriani (pronounced CHIP-riani), the 14-year-old restaurant at the Sherry-Netherland hotel, across Fifth Avenue from Central Park. Nor is it the decor, which may be comfortable but seems stark compared to the other restaurants in New York that serve $27 hamburgers.

“To be honest about it,” said a designer of wearable art, Marjorie Nezin, who was seated at the bar nursing a virgin Bellini, “it’s to see and be seen.” That evening she wore a medieval-looking creation fashioned of chains, reptile-print vinyl, and scraggly black strings. “I made it,” she said. “It’s real human hair.”

A new Cipriani is scheduled to open next winter in Trump Park Avenue, the new luxury apartment building in the former Delmonico Hotel, two avenues away on 59th Street. Meanwhile, the Cipriani company is in the midst of negotiations with the Sherry-Netherland on a new 15-year lease, and rumor has it that the restaurant on Fifth is just a shake away from moving out.

The hotel’s chief operating officer, Michael Littler, said the Sherry-Netherland may lower the rent to retain the restaurant. “We’re working very hard to see if we can find something that works,” Mr. Littler said.

While a Cipriani representative said there are no plans to close, waiters and customers seem to be in agreement: The end is near.

That prospect underscores a sea change in New York’s nightlife. Partying in glamorous hotel dining rooms and hotel bars crested in the 1960s, when people still went home to change before going out to dinner. These rooms, once the prime after-dark destination for New York’s moneyed 30-and-up set, now are the province of stodgy tourists. At the same time, more and more of Gotham’s night crawlers are having their chauffeurs drop them off outside luxury apartment buildings where they do not reside.

In the past three years, more than a few of the city’s high-profile apartment buildings have entered a marketing war to score the hottest expensive restaurants. Le Cirque’s Sirio Maccioni alone has been approached by more than a dozen developers offering “under-market” deals to open a restaurant in their building.

For the builders, the attraction is twofold: They can offer potential buyers yet another amenity, and being home to a four-star restaurant raises a property’s profile.

Some residents like it, saying it makes them feel special to be able to order take-out from a place like Daniel. But it can also mean long black cars idling outside the building, noisy rings of smokers chatting on the sidewalk, and, not least, plagues of fauna visited on their homes.

Still, the real-estate developers are forging ahead. The trend can be traced back to 1997, when Donald Trump installed the restaurant Jean-Georges in his Central Park West property. A Jean-Georges is coming to the Meier buildings on Perry Street. And the Time Warner Center has taken it to a new level with a restaurant row featuring Per Se and Masa, two of the priciest places in town.

There’s little chance the crowded, familiar atmosphere of the Sherry-Netherland Cipriani can be reproduced in a massive space in a tower owned by Mr. Trump, a man whose style isn’t known for its playfulness or originality.

Until it’s time to go, however, Cipriani at the Sherry-Netherland, a copy of the original Harry’s Bar in Venice, carries on.

Should your companion walk in without a jacket, the energetic maitre d’, Hassan, will bustle over and offer a jacket, courtesy of the house. “Don’t worry,” he’ll say, “we have 20. But we cannot give one to the woman. With women here, the less the better.”

Should you find yourself drifting into reverie at the bar, you will be startled by the sensation of something gliding up and down the back of your hand. It’s the touch of Sal, the bartender. “You want a Bellini,” he’ll tell you. “Everybody wants one here.”

The crowd consists of flocks and pairs. Nobody comes alone. Couples aren’t asked how they want to be seated – they’re automatically put on the same side of the table, with their backs to the wall, for people-watching.

Sarah Brooks, a full-time mom who had come to catch up with a couple of female friends, has been a regular for years. “There’s this one couple that comes here every single night and sits up front,” she said. “He’s a plastic surgeon and she’s his patient. They’re my favorite.”

“Cipriani downtown is all 20-year-old models,” chimed in her friend Emily Johnson, a leggy blonde. “This one is more sophisticated.”

“I like the people that come here,” said Hanne Lauridsen, a Danish multimedia installation artist who also frequents the Boat House in Central Park. “A gentleman came up to me once and said I’m keeping up a certain standard.” Her favorite Cipriani restaurant is the original one in Venice, where she is allowed to dine with her Yorkshire terrier CiCi. “She is very admired there,” Ms. Lauridsen said.

In the background the waiters were covering a row of small tables with what looked like cardboard and taping it down. They covered it with a tablecloth, and, within a couple of minutes, Prince Albert of Monaco and an entourage were seated.

As for the food, it’s perfectly edible, and the prices are perfectly humorous. A $190 dinner for two featured a plate of beefy prosciutto, a small mound of raw tuna, and a plate of pasta with cut-up bits of ham and melted cheese. A little jug of house wine was also included. “This tastes like something we’d eat back home,” said my Tulsa-bred companion.

By 11 o’clock, the restaurant had pretty much emptied out. The prince’s table was polishing off puffy slices of cake, and there were only a handful of other diners, including Madeleine Albright, who had come with a dignified-looking female companion. Ms. Albright took off her glasses when her pie arrived.

As two diners worked their way toward the exit, a smartly dressed young man at a table in the back watched. When he caught one of the eyes of one of the departing customers, he rose to his feet and bowed gallantly. He certainly didn’t need to go to the trouble, but at Cipriani that’s what one does.