This stackoverflow article is what helped me get over this, without having to uninstall VS 2019.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33896511/npm-install-fails-with-node-gyp
I already had python 2.7 installed on my system, so the only thing I had to do in adition was to install Visual C++ Build tools from here, https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=691126, and then configure npm to use python 2.7 and VS2015
After that, npm install run just fine.