St Kilda's Greyhound Hotel, opened in 1853 and made famous by its 1990s drag queen culture, faces the wrecking ball as early as next week unless Planning Minister Richard Wynne steps in.

It is the latest historic pub in the bayside area to face demolition, with Port Melbourne's 147-year-old London Hotel knocked down last month.

Port Phillip Council on Thursday asked Mr Wynne to apply a temporary heritage overlay to the pub site, in a bid to prevent its immediate destruction.

The pub shut in January. Soon after, the council rejected an application for an eight-storey apartment building. The owners of the building have appealed to the state planning tribunal. They also have a demolition permit, issued by a private building surveyor last June. It allows the pub to be knocked down at any time.

The council has received an application for works, including the possible erection of hoardings around the pub from next week.

"Demolition could be imminent," said Mayor Bernadene Voss. "This really is a race against time to save The Greyhound."

At a meeting on Wednesday night, the council voted to ask Mr Wynne to protect the building.

The council commissioned heritage consultants Context to assess the building's cultural importance to Melbourne.

Cr Voss said Mr Wynne had declined an earlier request by the council to protect the building from demolition because a heritage assessment had not been undertaken.

The Greyhound was significantly renovated in 1936, meaning it is unlikely to receive a heritage listing for the building alone as it has been drastically altered from its original form. The council instead wants the cultural significance of the hotel to see it protected.

The Context report finds that the hotel is important because the drag culture that developed there mirrored the wider acceptance of the lesbian and gay community both locally and nationally.

"Developments at the Greyhound Hotel chart the fortunes of the lesbian [and] gay ??? community and drag elsewhere in Australia, where drag moved from low-key underground entertainment influenced by the illegality of homosexuality, to big production shows," the report finds.

It found the hotel held local historic and social significance both because it was "one of a few remaining buildings in Port Phillip which reflects the history of Victorian hotels generally", as well as its links to the gay and lesbian community.

A spokesman for Mr Wynne said the minister would consider any council request "provided it had done the necessary heritage assessments".

He said that if the council had met its requirements and made further representations to the minister, Mr Wynne would "consider them on their merits".