By comparing the tests of prestressed and nonprestressed brick masonry walls with peripheral beams and Constructional columns, under cyclic lateral loading,the apperaence and development of Cracks,failure mechanism,hysteretic behavior,strength,stiffness,ductility and ener-gy dissipation of the brick rnasonry walls arc studied.Only the crack resistance and bearing capacity of walls are discussed in this paper.It is shown that prestressing on brick masonry wall can obviotisly improve its seismic behavior.Morcover,calculating methods for the crack resistance and the ultimate bearing capacity are presented,and the caculating results are identical with the tests.