Many buildings suffered severe damage during the Mw8.0 512 Wenchuan earthquake, especially the Masonry structure buildings. Field reconnaissance was carried out in the epicentral region after the Earthquake. The damage styles of multi-story masonry structure buildings were presented and the reasons of all kinds of damage were analyzed in this paper. According to the performance of multi-story masonry structure buildings, it was observed that collapses of multi-story masonry school buildings were mainly due to insufficient bearing capability of walls between windows. If the multi-story masonry structure buildings were designed seriously following the codes and had satisfactory quality construction, the buildings (school and resident) have good performance. The shear resistance and compression resistance of masonry walls with tie-columns were much higher than those of masonry walls without tie-columns. This indicates that RC tie-columns not only can improve the ductility of masonry structures, but also can increase the shear and compression resistance. Crack orientation in the masonry walls varied widely due to effects of earthquake. Buildings with satisfactory seismic concept design generally performed well.
