Agree that Zeppelins were cool, but -- the Empire State Building thing was kind of an publicity stunt... Apparently even that photo was doctored. Winds would have made it impractical: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/docking-on-the-empire-state-building-12525534/
Discussion
The photo was some sort of sketch while they while they still were working on it .
“At the time, no airship had docked at the Empire State Building. That didn’t happen until September 1931, when a privately-owned dirigible docked for a mere three minutes, in a 40-mile-per-hour wind. “Traffic was tied up in the streets below for more than a half hour as the pilot”