Just because something is at or near a foundation does not mean it automatically has anything to do with settlement. I’ve seen actual structural damage from settlement maybe half a dozen times in the past 36 years. I’ve seen hundreds – probably thousands, but I don’t want to exaggerate – examples of floors sagging, unbraced walls bowing, lateral drift from poor design, and just general weathering damage, quite a bit of which someone has called “settlement.”
The damage to the corner of the building above is a materials problem. Water – maybe rain splashing off the pavement, maybe ground water pulled upwards by capillary action, maybe snow piled up against the building during shoveling – has caused the mortar to deteriorate. So the bricks have loosened and moved. Settlement would be downward movement of the foundation below, which would have caused cracking on both sides of the corner and humps or depressions in the brick paving.
