The main purpose of this research is to contribute in the field of the history of construction and architectural technique in Valparaiso harbor between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thereby, the work of the renowned architect/engineer Esteban Orlando Harrington will be reviewed, who designed and built more than 20 buildings most of them in brick masonry. This building typology will be analyzed from a categorization of the materials implemented, the structural criteria used, and a detailed building system survey made on site. From this approaching, the features of the examined construction system are obtained, and presumably improved by the architect/engineer Harrington, which have conditioned its permanency on time in a zone of high seismic risk.