In this paper relationships between building performance and ground motion are developed in the form of damage probability matrices and fragility curves using empirical data from recent earthquakes. Data from the 1994 Northridge, California and the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquakes are aggregated and analyzed in order to develop these relationships. Only those buildings located near free-field strong motion recording stations (and on similar site conditions) were extracted from available databases (SAC and LADiv88 building datasets). Two classes of buildings were extracted from their respective datasets – those within 1000 feet of a recording station and those within 1 km of a recording station. Several ground motion parameters and different building performance measures are considered and damage functions are developed for the parameters of which there were sufficient data. Correlation analyses are performed to identify the parameters that best correlate to each ground motion parameter. Resulting empirical fragility curves are introduced for steel moment frame, concrete frame, concrete shear wall, wood frame and rehabilitated unreinforced masonry buildings. Sample damage functions are presented in the paper to illustrate the results of the analyses.