Willem Stok sr. Willem Stok senior (1838-1893) worked as an architect in the mid-nineteenth century in the office of the engineer Cornelis Outshoorn (1812-1875), who designed the first railway station in Rotterdam in 1857. Only two designs are known by Stok senior, a residential house (1878) and a monumental panorama building (1881), both in Rotterdam. The panorama was a typical nineteenth-century form of popular entertainment found in most major cities. In the Netherlands, the Panorama Mesdag in The Hague is the only remaining circular panorama. Painted scenes from (military) history or landscape were displayed all around in a panorama building. Stok sr. designed a richly decorated entertainment temple in neoclassical style near Rotterdam Central Station in which the first canvas depicting the battle of Nieuwpoort was opened on August 9, 1881. The public was initially very impressed by the perspective and the perfect illusion, but with the advent of the cinema at the end of the nineteenth century, the enthusiasm quickly waned. As early as 1887, the rotunda no longer appeared on city maps.