xoB always has food for thought.
Besides the Union Square "office" ship, seen finished and colorized here:
http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/Univ...ion_square.GIF
There was another wooden USS Recruit, a large scale mock-up at the San Diego Naval Training Station built after WWII and referred to as the USS Neversail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit
And a real USS Recruit, a Admirable-Class Minesweeper built in 1943 with a short, sort of strange service in the Pacific:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Recruit_(AM-285)