Abstract: To improve the seismic performance of bridges with tall piers, a composite box tall pier with replaceable components is proposed, based on design the concept of earthquake resilient structures. The composite tall pier composes of four concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns and low-yield-point (LYP) steel plates. Axial and eccentric compression tests on a set of specimens were conducted to investigate the bearing capacity of composite tall piers, and their axial load-displacement curves, axial load-strain curves and failure modes were obtained. Based on the verified finite element model, parametric analysis was carried out to investigate the influence of load eccentricity, of the slenderness ratio of specimens and, of the thickness of LYP steel plate on the compressive bearing capacity. The results showed that: both the composite tall piers under axial and eccentric loads exhibited obvious in-plane bending, and the failure modes were global elastic-plastic instability. As eccentricity ratio increased from 0 to 0.54, or slenderness ratio increased from 4 to 79, the compressive capacity decreased by 49% and 38%, respectively. The influence of eccentricity and slenderness ratio was essentially independent of each other. As the thickness of LYP steel plate increased from 1mm to 10mm, the axial bearing capacity only increased by 9.5%, and the eccentric bearing capacity increased by about 25%. Supposed the composite tall pier could be simplified as a lattice column composed of CFST columns and steel beams, a calculation formula for the axial compressive capacity was proposed, considering the restraint effects of LYP steel plates on the columns and the steel beams. The calculation formula for the eccentric compressive capacity was proposed with the reduction coefficient, which could be expressed as a product of the reduction coefficients of stability and eccentricity ratio. The theoretical calculation results are in a good agreement with the test results and numerical results, which shows that the proposed calculation formula can be used for the calculation of the compressive capacity of composite tall piers.