Generalized inter-story drift spectrum, in which the existing structures are equivalently simplified as combined shear-flexural beams and the FEM models, was used to analyze the influence of a subway station, which was supposed to be buried in three types of homogeneous foundations respectively on the inter-story drift and anti-seismic performance of nearby buildings. It is illustrated that the existence of subway station will increase the inter-story drift of adjacent structures, which is harmful for the safety and the seismic performance; the influence of the subway station decreases gradually as the distance of the building to the subway station increases. According to the cases analyzed in this paper, the influence of the subway station is the most significant when the station is buried in soft site. Moreover, the approximate range of influence of the subway station in special site conditions were given and discussed: for the soft site condition, the buildings away from the station with a distance 2.0 times the length of the station will still be affected; and in the hard site, the calculations obtained from the conditions with and without the subway station are almost the same when the distance equals to 1.5 times the length of the station.