Our Spectra Glaze® Block is a lightweight, modular concrete block with a permanent glazed face on one or more surfaces integrally bonded to the base block in a unique manufacturing system. Spectra-Glaze® Block will allow you to enjoy design opportunities with a wide choice of color, texture, form, scale and pattern. Spectra-Glaze® Block provides superior resistance to soiling, chemicals, marking, impact, abrasion, urine, blood and acid rain. They are fire safe, non-toxic block which meet all national building codes - and meet U.S.D.A and OSHA requirements for sanitary walls. This excellent wall material provides the durability, fire resistance, insulation, sound control and all other constructional advantages of concrete masonry. With Spectra-Glaze® Block, you build and finish in one labor operation, saving time and money. Operational and life cycle costs are also reduced. Produced under controlled factory conditions, the satin-finish facing is not subject to the variable of on-site applications, and offers benefits unique to a Spectra-Glaze® Block wall system. Spectra-Glaze® Block have been satisfying design needs in all kinds of buildings for over 50 years.

The Burns, Berry & Russell Company traces its heritage back through six generations of the Russell family and through more than two hundred years of life in Baltimore, Maryland. Once America's foremost manufacturers of hand made bricks, The Burns & Russell Company has evolved into a leading high-tech manufacturer of contemporary masonry products. Alexander Russell I first started his brickyard in the late eighteenth century, on land at Spring Gardens on the Patapsco River. The firm soon made itself a central part of the history of Baltimore. One of its earliest clay mines was on the land that is now home to the two Camden Yard stadiums where the Orioles play baseball and the Ravens play football. Russell Street is the main road which passes along side of the Oriole's and Raven's stadiums which still bares the name of the firm. The nearby Camden Railroad Station Building was constructed using Burns & Russell clay products. The picture to the upper right shows Camden Railroad Station shortly after it was completed in 1852. At the time it was built, it was the largest railroad station in the world. One of Alexander Russell's first partners, Colonel John Berry, was a hero in the battle for Fort McHenry during the war of 1812. The firm's leading product-top quality, hand crafted brick-became the basic building material for much of Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay Region.

Baltimore's Shot Tower, one of the tallest structures in the nation at the time and now a federal monument, was constructed in 1828 with more than a million fine bricks supplied by The Burns & Russell Company. The firm also supplied bricks to construct the B&O Railroad tunnels and bridges, and to build Baltimore's Mount Clare passenger station in 1830. Mount Clare now ranks as the oldest surviving railroad station in the world.

As the company moved towards completion of its first century in business, its products gained worldwide renown. In 1876 the company won a gold medal for excellence at the Philadelphia Centennial Industrial Exposition. It won again at the Paris Exposition
of 1898.

In 1948 The Burns, Russell partnership research program was experimenting with new glazes for brick and had begun to uncover the secrets of a revolutionary method of glazing masonry block. The resulting structural glazed masonry block found widespread acceptance, with a coast-to-coast domestic market, as well as customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Western Europe, and the Middle East.