  We analyse - within the hamiltonian formalism with staggered fermions - the
patterns of chiral symmetry breaking for the strongly coupled Schwinger and
$U({\cal N}_c)$-color `t Hooft models with one and two flavor of fermions.
Using the correspondence between these strongly coupled gauge models and
antiferromagnetic spin chains, we provide a rather intuitive picture of their
ground states, elucidate their patterns of chiral symmetry breaking, and
compute the pertinent chiral condensates. Our analysis evidences an intriguing
relationship between the values of the lattice chiral condensates of the `t
Hooft and Schwinger models with one flavor of fermions.
