Unnoticed by passersby and often unmarked by plaques, numerous Toronto addresses with big parts to play in cultural history sit mostly uncelebrated. In our series Local Legends, we put them on your mental map.

It might be hard to believe now, but Bay and Wellesley was once the city’s most glamorous intersection. On one side was the Parisian-styled Bistro 990; on the other, the Sutton Place Hotel. Every September in the 1980s and ’90s, when celebrities came to town, that’s where they stayed.

From the handsome Christopher Plummer, to the blue-eyed Paul Newman and the striking Sophia Loren, Sutton Place’s guest list read like a who’s who of the time — especially during the Toronto International Film Festival.

“These were exciting times in the city as the film festival started to grow to what it is today,” said Hans Gerhardt, the hotel’s general manager from 1986 to 1993.

“The film boom at the time was amazing.”

Those were the glory days of Sutton Place, when for a brief, frenzied period each year during the festival, A-listers, publicists and media would make the hotel their home and where they’d gather each day for press conferences and parties.

It had “a great vibe. Like just a great vibe,” recalled Barbara Hershenhorn, the president of Party Barbara Co., who’s been planning TIFF parties for more than three decades.

“You didn’t walk through the lobby without running into someone you knew from yet another part of the world,” said Hershenhorn, who in 1992 ran the festival’s parties from her bed in a suite at the hotel while recovering from emergency appendix surgery.

“Everything went off without a hitch to the best of my knowledge because I couldn’t witness it first hand,” she laughed.

Piers Handling, TIFF’s director and CEO, remembered the hotel’s “holiday camp atmosphere” because all the staffers of the festival — then called the Festival of Festivals — would be holed up there, working.

“The great thing about Sutton was it was the site of our hospitality suite where everyone had breakfast and free alcohol,” recalled Handling, calling it “party central.”

The suite would open at night and would become a hotspot where you could rub shoulders with famous actors.

“It was almost like a speakeasy,” Handling said. “That was where we had some of the most fun times.”

The festival eventually outgrew the hotel and expanded into Yorkville, before settling in its own permanent location at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2010. But memories of Sutton Place remain.

“You can’t have all the festival guests in the same hotel anymore, like it used to be in the old days,” said Handling.

The Sutton played host to occasional festival intrigue. In 1994, Robert Downey Jr. threw a wall-punching tantrum over a minor mix-up at the front desk. In 2006, the hotel was fined more than $600 for allowing actor Sean Penn to light up a cigarette during a press conference.

After the lights dimmed on the film festival each year, Sutton Place — which focused primarily on extended stays — still hosted Hollywood’s elite, who often stayed for weeks on end while they starred in movies being made in the area.

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Films like Sea of Love with Al Pacino and Three Men and a Baby had scenes filmed in the hotel. And actor Dudley Moore even played piano in six sold-out shows during the film festival one year after losing a bet to Gerhardt.

The hotel was “very traditional in the European sense,” recalled the former manager. It had gleaming marble floors, crystal chandeliers throughout, a dining room with a piano, surrounded with fresh azalea flowers year-round and a ballroom where countless parties were held.

It even had a butler, something unique at the time, recalled Gerhardt. “He was a character. People loved him and he became friends and drinking partners with many.”

Across Bay Street was another celebrity hotspot, Bistro 990.

The French restaurant “was legendary in terms of the film festival and the talent,” said Hershenhorn, recalling during TIFF it used to open for breakfast and serve coffee and croissants, something they didn’t do normally.

The bistro was perhaps best known for its roast chicken, a dish actress Meg Ryan had delivered to the set of Against the Ropes in Hamilton daily.

Back then, an average night at the hotel cost about $170, or $300-plus in today’s age, said Gerhardt.

The rates were “relatively low,” he said, adding, “And we were a no-name brand combating all these franchised systems.”

The hotel’s primary competitor in the luxury market in those days was the nearby boutique hotel Windsor Arms and the much larger Four Seasons in Yorkville. But as the economy soured in the 1990s and more luxury chain hotels arrived, Sutton Place’s fortunes began to change.

Once dubbed one of the best in the world by the TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Sutton Place closed its doors for good in 2012. This year would have marked the hotel’s 50th anniversary.

Today, there is no hint of the old glamour. The building has been stripped down and is being turned into a condo called The Britt by Lanterra Developments. The handsome bistro across the street closed the same year, replaced by a glass-walled condominium tower.

“The city today changed so much but does the hotel warrant to be in the neighbourhood and would the Sutton Place have the allure and the reputation to continue in the more modern set-up?” Gerhardt wonders.

“Yes,” he answers. “A lot of people met there and went on dates there, married there and got divorces there, had their affairs there . . . It would have been nice, but it’s a changing time so you can’t hold onto something.”