Abstract：Urban tunnel excavation has caused frequent incidents of surface building damage, which has attracted interests from the academic community. However, there lacks case studies of surface building damage caused by deep tunnel excavation. Therefore, it is imperative to study the impacting mechanism of deep tunnel construction on surface buildings in the vicinity, the building response modes, and formulate measures for protecting surface buildings. In recent years, excessive deformations, cracks and other damage occurred in the buildings of a village in the southwest of the Loess Plateau, below which a tunnel was constructed at a depth of 210 m. Taking this tunnel as an example, the paper explores the impact of tunnel construction on surface buildings through on-site investigations, surveying and mapping, mathematical statistics, geophysical exploration, and model analysis. Crack mapping and statistical results show that building deformation, cracking and tunnel excavation exhibit a high spatiotemporal consistency. Temporally, the occurrence and development of building cracks are almost synchronous with deep tunnel construction, and crack development lags slightly behind. Spatially, the degree of development of building cracks, building settlement, and the displacement vector of building cracks are all closely related to the tunnel. Building cracks mainly develop within three times the tunnel diameter on either side of the tunnel axes in the plane. Building type has a significant impact on the response to tunnel construction which unengineered civil structures are more sensitive to tunnel construction than masonryconcrete structures, and are more prone to severe damage. The geophysical survey results indicated that when the surrounding rock stability was poor, the vibration during deep tunnel excavation would damage the original structure of the rock and soil mass, forming a channel for underground water infiltration, and leading the groundwater table drop rapidly. Saturated loess lost water and consolidated unevenly under building loads, which was the fundamental cause of ground surface building cracking. To avoid surface building cracking induced by deep tunnel construction, it is necessary to conduct detailed engineering geological exploration before tunnel construction to identify engineering geological and hydrogeological conditions, develop a reasonable construction excavation and support and underground water seepage prevention plan. It is also important to conduct long-term safety monitoring of surface buildings.