If you are certain that your source actually states "Chester Street Prison" and not some other name difficult to read in handwriting, I cannot provide positive help to you. As you indicated, the other two major St. Louis prisons were called by other street names based on their frontage addresses. The two women's prison locations were on Chestnut Street and on Gratiot Street down a ways from the other prison on the same street. That pretty well exhausts the possibilities that this "Chester Street Prison" was in St. Louis.

I wonder if that could possibly refer to the Alton Military Prison upriver in Alton, Illinois, which was the condemned former state penitentiary in Alton. In my prison research I never heard it referred to by a street name. I searched through my Eakins and my Hesseltine references which don't state on which streets that prison was located.

I can't speak for Alton, IL, but the downtown St. Louis street names were changed after the war, according to William C. Winter's wonderful "The Civil War in St. Louis: A Guided Tour." Besides confusing things, the name changes may give a clue regarding the possibility the prison you seek could be one of those in St. Louis. I doubt that, but I offer it for completeness.

The pattern of naming Union military prisons for the streets on which the prison fronts does tend to point to another Midwest location. Since the best known Midwest location of "Chester" is for Chester, IL, I would agree that searching in Illinois for a prison named for a "Chester Street" seems a likely idea.

One possibility. I checked the well-made indices of the "Official Records" Series 2 eight volumes, all of which refer to prisoner issues. The Gratiot Street and Myrtle Street prisons appear in each index under those names. There is no entry for a "Chester Street Prison" in any of the eight volumes. However...there is in volume six entries on pages 119, 144, and 228 for "sick and wounded prisoners" at Chester, Pennsylvania after the great Gettysburg battle. Could someone have accidentally misrepresented Chester, PA for "Chester Street Prison?" in the source to which you refer?

Sorry I couldn't help more, but my research is with the Missouri area Union military prisons. Good hunting.

Bruce Nichols