Red Brick Universities.

Academia The Victoria Building at the University of Liverpool which now houses their art gallery and museum celebrated its 120th year a couple of days ago and their blog has a commemorative history with some ravishing photographs and this factoid which is surprisingly little known (or at least few people seem to have known it when I've asked them):

"The distinctive exterior of the building led to the coining of the phrase ‘red brick university’ by Bruce Truscot, the pseudonym adopted by Edgar Allison Peers, a Professor of Spanish at Liverpool from 1922 – 52, who wrote an influential book of the same title about universities originating in the 19th century."

The inevitable wikipedia entry demonstrates however that plenty of universities have red bricked buildings and live up to the name.