In China, it is a common phenomenon that severe disaster occurs in weak earthquakes. One important reason of casualty and loss is the severe damage and collapse of buildings. The bottom-business multi-story masonry structure is the most severely damaged building form. In the Wenchuan earthquake, 80% of these types of buildings were ruined, while the bottom-business multi-story masonry structure is very popular in the small and middle towns in the south of China. According to inadequate statistics, about two million such buildings exist in China, which are inhabited by 120 million residents. Thus, it is necessary to study the earthquake resistant mechanism of this building structure and the methods to reinforce the existing buildings to reduce the damages caused by earthquakes. Through investigating the post-earthquake sites, it is found that in the same meizoseismal area, individual bottom-business multi-story masonry structures have shown very good seismic performance. The difference between these buildings and other bottom-business multi-story masonry buildings lies in the fact that winged walls and winged columns were added to the side of the columns in the longitudinal wall of the bottom floor. This structural measure raises the earthquake resistant capacity of the building and reduces the rigidity difference between the front and back vertical walls in the bottom floor; i.e., it reduces the earthquake load difference between the longitudinal walls to contain the damage rate of this building to as low as the middle of the XI zone. To study the influence of the wing column in the bottom of the front longitudinal wall on the collapse-resistant capacity of multi-story masonry structures, shake table tests of 1/5 scaled masonry structure models, with and without wing columns, have been conducted. The damage progression, acceleration amplification factor, relative displacement and strain at typical positions were compared and analyzed. The results show that the damage state, the inter-story displacement and the inter-story drift ratio of the model with wing columns were much lower compared with the model without wing columns. It indicates that the collapse resistant capacity of bottom-business multi-story masonry structures with wing columns would be better than the original structure.