I don't think you read the linked article. Yes, there have been several "USS Recruits" at various bases which have hosted Navy boot camps over the years. One is in San Diego at Liberty Station, a mixed-use development which used to be Naval Training Center San Diego and is now anchored by a Stone brewpub.
Source: I served in San Diego in the reserves, did detachments there while on active duty, quaffed quite a few pints at said Stone brewpub, and have walked around the "ship."
The successor to that one is the USS Trayer. It's at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. It's a 2/3 scale Navy destroyer, indoors, in a water tank alongside a pier. It's not just a mockup; it's a large-scale simulator, and most of the equipment works. New Navy recruits go through a 12-hour training exercise on the ship, called "Battle Stations 21". The Navy doesn't give out full details, but fire and flooding are involved.
There's a somewhat similar sort of thing in New Jersey for development/training (not recruiting afaik), basically a warehouse with the superstructure of a cruiser/destroyer sitting on top of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Rancocas
> ”When the First World War came to an end, the USS Recruit stayed put for another two years. However, as Christenson explains, 'By 1920, the United States had the largest Navy in the world in terms of sailors, and there was less of a need for them with the end of World War I.' As such, the ship’s flag was lowered on March 16, 1920, and she was decommissioned and dismantled."
well yes, I assumed it was gone by the time I wandered through Union Square. I just feel like I should have seen a memo printed into metal about it at some point during my journeys.
Maybe not effective for it's intended purpose of frustrating the use of optical rangefinders, but it sure looked cool.