 Philadelphia's typhoid fever rate was among the highest in the nation, and most well-to-do families drank bottled spring water.Although Bellevue had been threatened since the 1840s by the proximity of the nearby railroads, it was now threatened more directly.In the 1870s the entire Bellevue estate, then owned by Joseph Wharton and his siblings, along with several other estates nearby that had been annexed into the city, was threatened with condemnation by the city for the construction of the proposed Cambria Reservoir to hold potable water.