When Jeannie Mooney was a little girl, her dad worked in an office in downtown Bangor. She dreamed of someday having an office of her own, somewhere over the traffic, among the solid city blocks.

Mooney grew up to be an artist, however, and as artists often do, she worked at home.

Until last month, when her dream finally came true. Mooney now works on the fourth floor of the Exchange Building on State Street, in a large studio with afternoon light and a sweeping view of the city.

Her office came complete with heat and air conditioning for $135 a month. (She hasn’t paid any rent yet — the first month is free.)

In her studio last week, Mooney looked as jubilant as a kid in a clubhouse, surrounded by creative clutter. There were tables covered with cloth, bowls full of beads and shells and rocks, an iron, a pair of binoculars.

“It’s consistent, continuous work with no interruptions,” said the artist, interrupted in the busy last days of preparing for a show.

Mooney’s hideaway is one of 22 artist’s studios on three of the Exchange Building’s six floors offered for rental in March by The Coe Management Group. Word spread quickly through Bangor’s close-knit artists community, and most of the affordable little nooks have been filled.

The decision to market space to artists came out of gathering cultural momentum downtown. Jack Donovan, trustee for Coe Management, said occupancy had declined at the aging Exchange Building in recent years.

“I saw the children’s museum and the possibility of an arts center, and it seemed like things were happening,” he said. “This is our contribution.”

Sally Burgess, a project coordinator in the city’s economic development department, noticed the “For Rent” signs in the Exchange Building and started a conversation about options.

“One of the goals many of us have for downtown Bangor is to encourage people with creative pursuits to spend time there, have studios there, even live there,” she said.

The presence of working artists downtown “has always been kind of a quiet thing,” she said. Now, with downtown revitalization linked to the promotion of arts and culture, “we really want to bring it out in the open,” Burgess explained.

She imagines artists welcoming the public for studio tours, hanging holiday lights in windows, “taking a vacant space and making it alive again.”

Artists have gladly accepted the city’s invitation. Painter Nina Jerome traded the studio she’s occupied for more than 20 years for a bright new space in the Exchange Building.

“I always thought it would be nice to be downtown, closer to the library, to be a part of things,” she said. “I liked the quality of light there, and I think the building has a nice personality.”

Most studios are small, 200 square feet, with tiled or carpeted floors and white walls. A few have sinks; some have storage cabinets.

Rebuilt in 1910 after fire destroyed it, the former Western Union building has dark wood trim, heavy banisters and a small elevator. A marble-and-granite entryway opens on a brick sidewalk. Satellite dishes sit on the roof, evidence of the radio station that occupies the top floor.

The building’s new use ties in nicely with the philosophy of Nancy Coe, former trustee for her family’s Bangor holdings. An artist, she died last year after a long painting career in California.

“I wish Nancy was alive, she’d be so excited by this,” Donovan said, looking at a reddish chalk portrait Coe drew of him on one of his business trips to San Jose.

The Coes prospered in Maine after venturing north from New Hampshire in 1842. Partners with the Pingree family in the timber trade, they put up a block of buildings on Main Street in Bangor. A generous tribe, the Coes established an infirmary at Bowdoin College in 1917 and donated a mansion on Court Street, Bangor, the former home of Dr. Thomas Upham Coe, for use as a school.

The family’s former cattle ranch in Santa Clara County, Calif., is now a state park.

Donovan said the rock-bottom rents are possible because Coe Management’s collection of professional offices and retail storefronts are 95 percent full. The company’s success elsewhere in Bangor makes the project possible.

“This way, we don’t have the vacancies, and there’s money coming in,” he said.

Burgess knows firsthand the importance of work space to artists. The city employee rents her own sparely furnished new studio in the Exchange Building, the first creative workplace she’s ever had outside her home.

“I don’t make lunch dates anymore,” she said. “I try to be there, drawing, all five noon hours. It’s so quiet, and you feel the energy of the other people there.”